SlowHill is a Finnish

Finland

Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...

  instrumental downtempo

Downtempo

Downtempo is a laid-back electronic music style similar to ambient music, but usually with a beat or groove unlike the beatless forms of Ambient music. The beat is sometimes made from loops that have a hypnotic feeling...

/lounge

Lounge music

Lounge music is a retrospective description of music popular in the 1950s and 1960s. It is a type of mood music meant to evoke in the listeners the feeling of being in a place — a jungle, an island paradise, outer space, et cetera — other than where they are listening to it...

 band project formed by the Slow

Slow (Producer & DJ)

Slow or DJ Slow is a Finnish DJ and music producer. His first encounters with hip hop acts such as Run-DMC, Public Enemy and Eric B & Rakim led him to pursue career in DJing, later making music and remixing others tracks...

 (aka Vellu Maurola) and the award-winning saxophonist Tapani Rinne

Tapani Rinne

Tapani Rinne is a Finnish musician, composer and record producer, who is known for his experimental and innovative style with the clarinet and saxophone.-Career:...

 in 2002. The band fuses downtempo beats into easy listening

Easy listening

Easy listening is a broad style of popular music and radio format that emerged in the 1950s, evolving out of big band music, and related to MOR music as played on many AM radio stations. It encompasses the exotica, beautiful music, light music, lounge music, ambient music, and space age pop genres...

 jazz

Jazz

Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...

 atmospheres.

History

SlowHill has released three albums via various record labels.

The first album Finndisc was the first ever electronica

Electronica

Electronica includes a wide range of contemporary electronic music designed for a wide range of uses, including foreground listening, some forms of dancing, and background music for other activities; however, unlike electronic dance music, it is not specifically made for dancing...

 album released by the legendary Blue Note

Blue Note Records

Blue Note Records is a jazz record label, established in 1939 by Alfred Lion and Max Margulis. Francis Wolff became involved shortly afterwards. It derives its name from the characteristic "blue notes" of jazz and the blues. At the end of the 1950s, and in the early 1960s, Blue Note headquarters...

 jazz label in Finland. The album concept was to unearth and sample classic jazz records from the vaults of EMI

EMI

The EMI Group, also known as EMI Music or simply EMI, is a multinational music company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the fourth-largest business group and family of record labels in the recording industry and one of the "big four" record companies. EMI Group also has a major...

 Finland who owns Blue Note Records catalogue.

The album features samples

Sampling (music)

In music, sampling is the act of taking a portion, or sample, of one sound recording and reusing it as an instrument or a different sound recording of a song or piece. Sampling was originally developed by experimental musicians working with musique concrète and electroacoustic music, who physically...

 from jazz artists such as Heikki Sarmanto

Heikki Sarmanto

Heikki Veli Uolevi Sarmanto is a Finnish jazz pianist and composer.Sarmanto started playing jazz in the 1960s. He studied first at the Sibelius Academy and later in Berklee College of Music in Boston...

, Teuvo Suojärvi, Mike Koskinen, Carita Holmström

Carita Holmström

Carita Elisabeth Holmström is a Finnish pianist, singer and songwriter. She has written and played jazz and classical music during her career...

 and Pekka Pohjola

Pekka Pohjola

Jussi Pekka Pohjola was a Finnish multi-instrumentalist, composer and producer. Best known as a bass player, Pohjola was also a classically trained pianist and violinist...

. Pohjola sample used on the SlowHill's track Valo was famously used also by DJ Shadow

DJ Shadow

Joshua Paul Davis better known as DJ Shadow is an American music producer, DJ and songwriter. He is considered a prominent figure in the development of instrumental hip hop and first gained notice with the release of his highly acclaimed debut album Endtroducing....., which was constructed...

 on his track Midnight in a Perfect World.

The debut album was subsequently released by Blue Note in UK

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

, Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

, Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

, Switzerland

Switzerland

Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....

, Italy

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

 and The Netherlands.

The band’s second album Fennika out on Plastinka Records was released in 2005 and features track composed for Pablo Neruda’s

Pablo Neruda

Pablo Neruda was the pen name and, later, legal name of the Chilean poet, diplomat and politician Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto. He chose his pen name after Czech poet Jan Neruda....

 poem and sample from Rajaton’s

Rajaton

Rajaton is a Finnish a cappella ensemble, founded in Helsinki in 1997. The Finnish word rajaton means "boundless", to indicate the breadth of their repertoire, from sacred classical to near Europop...

 song Butterfly.

The band’s third album is called Muzak and it was released in June 2010 by Universal Music Finland. The album features the violin

Violin

The violin is a string instrument, usually with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is the smallest, highest-pitched member of the violin family of string instruments, which includes the viola and cello....

ist Pekka Kuusisto

Pekka Kuusisto

Pekka Kuusisto is a Finnish classical and jazz violinist.Pekka Kuusisto began studying the violin at the age of three. His first violin teacher was Geza Szilvay at the East Helsinki Music Institute. In 1983 he enrolled in the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki. He began to study there with Tuomas...

 on electric guitars, percussionist Teho Majamäki and vocalist Siiri Nordin

Siiri Nordin

Siiri Nordin is a Finnish singer. She was the lead singer of the now defunct Finnish rock band Killer. In 2003 Nordin had a hit on her own with the song "Sydämeni osuman sai" included on the soundtrack of the movie Helmiä ja sikoja...

 among the guest musicians. It also marks the appearance of the first cover song by SlowHill: Rauno Lehtinen’s

Rauno Lehtinen

Rauno Väinämö Lehtinen vas a Finnish conductor and composer. He composed the 1960s hit Letkis which was based on a folk-dance. Letkis was recorded in over 92 countries....

jazz classic Toiset meistä