Basically one just wants to wrap him or herself up during these nasty minus degrees, with a nice cup of cacao and a decent book or movie. Or one supports the ongoing depression in the land of melancholy by listening to music from the land of melancholy. You don’t have the perfect fit in your CD shelf, well thanks to MySpace you will find something anyway that fits the beautiful cliché of Finnish tristesse and suicidal breakdowns. MySpace is a powerful source though that often makes you put your own destiny into its hands, ending up dancing in trance through your living room instead of being a freezing crank. Click, click, click: bingo. You don’t know how you ended up there, but you love the result. When leaving our friends Florist’s page the force strikes again: click, click: Murmansk!

Murmansk, isn’t that the city on Kola Bay? Yes, and from now on it's also a serious name when talking about Finnish export hits in music. The four-piece from Helsinki has been quite busy in 2010 and 2009 touring not only the Scandinavian countries but also Germany (a.o. Popkomm and Helsinki is Berlin Festival) and Russia with their so-called "Shoegaze with aggressive edge". That does not sound too promising yet. Promising is however their way of mixing distortion with psychedelic Indie Rock, giving not only shivers and awe, but also a somewhat Finnish-ized ode to the best of Sonic Youth, Mogwai, TOOL, ISIS and other similar acts, while still sounding totally un-Finnish in their rough, shattered New Wave progressiveness. It’s basically the perfect balance between nervous fidgeting and calm disturbance.

As Murmansk seems to be a band of rather few words there only is to add that they’re currently working on their third album, the follow-up to "Eleven Eyes To Shade". With their refreshing, slightly dodgy sound they will for sure travel the world and hopefully a lot of new minds in 2011. And now see your fingers making you experience the click, click: bingo!