Heroin and your veins - Dead people's trails (2007)

Sinikka & Orvo, Matti & Pekka, Eeva-Leena & Marjatta are having a blast at the local humppa joint (called Lihamarkkinat). The night is beautiful and the beer is mellow and the stars shudder brightly. Somebody throws up in a corner. A few scoundrels start a brawl at the other end of the joint. The band heroically delivers a string of classics from the past.

The orchestra is not called Rekka-pojat (not this time). They are Heroin and your veins. On Dead people's trails, the artist (yeah, it's one guy, but according to the homepage of Heroin...., there's a live band) churns out a mix of twisted humppa (a brand of Finnish entertainment music) & seedy, dark instrumentals somewhere in the shadowlands surrounding Bohren's work & post-rock ensambles like for example Explosions in the sky (but no crescendos). As you see, they draw on very different sources. Some of the material on the album could also, I suppose, be called some sort of surf music. Personally, I am not that great a fan of the genre (Jack Nietzsche?), but I am very delighted to have found this band, with an album abounding with exactly the right kind of cheesiness and alluring twist of tradition. One song, "Diet and cancer" makes me think of pukesy humppa, Joy division and the Surfaris at the same time. Some tunes on Dead people's trail are build around slower, but yet twangy, riffs that conjure up some of the landscapes that Bohren's music so masterfully evoke. The vaguely Lynchian ones. But with a steady, shiny dance-shoe on the Humppa (OK or maybe post-punk) joint floor.

This band should get some attention. Apparently, there's a new album, too. The sound is pretty good, I must say, and it is pretty cool that one of my favorite bands, Bohren & der club of gore, has gained some Finnish followers. And, what is vital in this context, Heroin and your veins is lots of fun (I expected glum goths). Get ready to shake a leg to some of the most narcoleptic, desolate-sounding music you will hear in a long time.