Pepe Deluxé

Pepe Deluxé
Pepe Deluxé's Paul Malmström (left) and James Spectrum
Background information
Origin	Helsinki, Finland
Genres	Electronica, trip hop, big beat, hip hop, breakbeat, neo-psychedelia
Years active	1996–present
Labels	Catskills Records Emperor Norton Records Asthmatic Kitty
Website	Official website
Members	James Spectrum Paul Malmström
Past members	DJ Slow JA-Jazz

Pepe Deluxé is a Finnish electronic music oriented band, formed in 1996 by DJ Slow (Vellu Maurola) JA-Jazz (Tomi Castrén, formerly Paajanen) and James Spectrum (Jari Salo) in Helsinki, Finland. They started to experiment with sounds of hip hop, big beat, breakbeat and downtempo. With the 2007 release Spare Time Machine the band gave up on sampling and concentrated on vintage music styles including Psychedelia, Baroque Pop and Surf Rock. DJ Slow departed the band in 2001 to pursue solo projects. JA-Jazz has been off-duty since 2008. Multi-instrumentalist Paul Malmström became official member of the band in 2008.

The Pepe Deluxé live line-up consists of Mirkka Paajanen (vocals), Miikka Paatelainen (guitar, theremin), Markku Reinikainen (drums), Ville Riippa (keyboards), James Spectrum (mixing, percussion) and Edward Greendanger (VJ).

The band's first release was a song called "Call Me Goldfinger". It was released in 1997 on the "Return of the DJ, Vol. II" scratch-DJ compilation album by Bomb Hip-Hop Records. After the release, the band continued making new Pepe Deluxé -music and also remixes for Finnish dance music -artists.

The band's first EP, Three Times a Player, 1998, was actually a demo released under an imaginary record label Tiger. It was still chosen as the downtempo album of the month by Muzik magazine in the UK. This led to a recording contract with Brighton's Catskills Records.

The band's first album, Super Sound, was released 1999. Due to clearance problems (the tracks were heavily sampled), they had to do a new version of the album with many of the tracks re-created with cleared samples or with live instruments. The new version of the album was released subsequently in France, Italy, Spain, The Netherlands, United States, Australia and Germany. The album was selected as an "Album of the Month" by several magazines.