A gently battered fierce panda one sheet

The Act: HELSINKI

The Release: 'A GUIDE FOR THE PERPLEXED'

The Formats: COMPACT DISC / VINYL / DOWNLOAD ALBUM

The Release Date: MARCH 2ND 2015

The Label: fierce panda records

The Tracklisting:
1. 'Rising Heights' 2. 'Cologne Hotel' 3. 'Choices' (feat Pete Doherty) 4. 'Brideshead' 5. 'The Batteries Weren’t Dead' (feat Albert Hammond Jr) 6. 'Keys' (feat Emma Gillespie) 7. 'Bitpart' 8. 'Ampersand' (feat Fionn Regan) 9. 'Ribtickling' (feat Fionn Regan) 10. 'Green-Eyed Twin' (feat Ray Suen)

The Truth: 'A Guide For The Perplexed' is the new album from Drew McConnell's HELSINKI, his second following the 2014 DIY release of 'Coast Of Silence'. It is preceded by the ‘Rising Heights’ single, out on February 23rd. Having kicked open the doors to 2015 with a sell out show at the Sebright Arms last month Drew’s crew celebrate the release of ‘A Guide For The Perplexed’ with these shows here:

FEBRUARY 24TH LONDON VILLAGE UNDERGROUND (supporting Baxter Dury)
SOLD OUT
MARCH 2ND LONDON OXFORD STREET 100 CLUB (album launch party)
Advance tickets £8.00 from
www.wegottickets.com/event/308158

As the name may suggest Drew McConnell's HELSINKI is the side project of Drew McConnell, bass player in Babyshambles and musician to the stars, judging by his vivacious CV and the rollcall of musicians on ‘A Guide For The Perplexed’.

For as well as the guest artists such as Pete Doherty, Albert Hammond Jr, Fionn Regan and Emma Gillespie, the free-flowing HELSINKI band vibe incorporates the stellar talents of drummer Seb Roachford (Polar Bear), double bassist Spencer Brown (Andy Sheppard), guitarist Matt Park (Mystery Jets), keyboardist Stephen Large (Squeeze, Paul Heaton), percussionist Jamie Morrison (The Noisettes, Stereophonics) and violinists Johnny Fielding (Larrikin Love) and Gillian Maguire (Soko, Swim Deep). These are the industry's backroom dreamers helping to haul Drew into the limelight.

Indeed the sweet irony is that the lead-off single is the terrific 'Rising Heights', released on February 23rd, in which Drew stars on his vocal lonesome. Like the rest of 'A Guide For The Perplexed' it is a song with its heart on its tattered sleeve and its tattered sleeve reaching for the ragged sky, a coy melody uncurling from a nonchalant gumbo of organic acoustic soundscapes which are jaunty and sulky and trampy and ever-so-gently riotous, frequently all at the same time. At one choice moment in 'Choices' you will experience the exotique sounds of French reggae, and nothing will ever be the same again.

Somewhat amazingly 'A Guide For The Perplexed' was recorded live over TWO DAYS in Ben Hillier's studio, the Pool Room in Bermondsey, by engineer Mark Rankin (Adele, QOTSA, Florence & The Machine). "I guess you could say it was produced by me," says Drew, "But really I just played the guys the chords a couple of times on the acoustic guitar and told them loosely how I'd imagined it to sound arrangement-wise. I know all these guys so well and have played with them all so much that we have a kind of shorthand with each other musically. It didn't even strike me as an odd way to do it until I'd spoken to people about it afterwards. It does give the recordings a certain freshness though, as for everyone in the room the songs were literally brand new. The parts you're hearing are being imagined, executed and recorded all at once."

He knows his musical onions, does Drew: as well as this here Helsinki project and the Babyshambles day job he went barking mad with Mongrel alongside various Arctic Monkeys and Reverend And The Makers, and has performed with a multitude of other characters, from The La's to Lethal Bizzle to Africa Express with Damon Albarn, Gruff Rhys and Flea in Lagos and Paris – all this alongside his long-term involvement with the Love Music Hate Racism movement. Heck, his provenance is so profoundly impressive search hard enough and you'll find that a baby-faced Drew appeared on fierce panda's 'Mosh & Go' compilation a few lifetimes ago as part of a punk band.

So he's lived a few lively lives, has Mr McConnell. Even so, the free-flowing communal musical vibe of Helsinki is surely light years away from the fight club gang mentality of, say, Babyshambles, right? "Well, the guys that play in Helsinki are all my closest friends, really," he ponders. "Besides being the folks I look up to the most musically they're also the folks I drink with, go on writing holidays with, walk in parks talking about girls, art, politics, arguments, breakfast cereals, astronomy and dishwater tablets with. They're the people that populate my life - I share a flat with two of them. The record makes me so happy because I hear their personalities all over it.
"A gang? Well, you might not find us bowling through Soho together wearing leather jackets, but it's not unusual to see a handful of us stumbling through Highgate Cemetery arguing about Miles Davis and the Arab Spring..."

www.drewhelsinki.com www.drewhelsinki.com