Dustland

VINYL FORMAT. This is the second full-length by Finnish siblings Samu and Ville Kuukka aka The Gentleman Losers, the follow-up to their 2006 debut on the Buro label. The brothers have been making music since their early teens, and they both still revel in a sound that evokes tarnished grandeur - where decay and starry-eyed innocence rub shoulders with dusty strings and syrup-drenched instrumentation. If the band's debut was like a sneak-peak into their universe, Dustland breathes the air of more than confident self-assurance. More refined and more detailed, the new album sounds like a ballroom orchestra recorded inside a snow globe.

Big songs compressed through the bottleneck of lo-fi genius. Meanwhile, the ballerina still dances. A seamless, deep journey into an unknown yet familiar world, packed with references still to become reality. From the opening track "Honey Bunch," which dances around a little guitar motif backed up by a horizon full of slideairiness, to the tape-hiss-driven "Silver Water Ripples" - from "Lullaby Of Dustland," which is exactly that, to the dark drones of "Wind In Black Trees," to the '60s movie soundtrack-flavored harpsichord of "Farandole," with Dustland, The Gentleman Losers deliver a fascinating, hypnotic second album. Muses Ville when asked about their sound, "...it's about memories of things to come - faded souvenirs from a twilight place that no one has been to." Adds Samu: "That place is called Dustland."