Communion by Rebecca Clamp & Matti Keltanen

Rebecca Clamp and Matti Keltanen release a single that moves the lyrical landscape from Helsinki to New York City.

Helsinki based songwriter Rebecca Clamp began collaborating with electronic musician Matti Keltanen in 2007 but their work has largely been kept under lock and key until now. A notable exception are the two bonus tracks on the extended download version of Clamp's album 'Key to the City' (2011). If you enjoyed Keltanen's dark, electronic arrangement for 'Here We Are' then you are in for a treat with this release.

The imagery for 'Communion' comes from a photograph Keltanen took of a night scene on the corner of Prince and Lafayette in New York City, where he was living at the time. The same photograph also inspired the single's artwork by NYC based artist Brian McLaughlin. Clamp describes her strange and evocative lyrics to Communion as 'a meditation on desire'.

For the B-side Keltanen and Clamp completely rework the old Robert Johnson classic: 'Preaching Blues (Up Jumped the Devil)'. Keltanen's angry and hypnotic composition effectively conjures up Johnson's vision of 'Blues walking like a man': listening on headphones he seems to be pacing round your brain, accompanied by Clamp's haunting vocals.

Johnson's lyrics to Preaching Blues end: 'Goin' down to the 'stil'ry, gonna stay there all day', and with their new single, Clamp and Keltanen have striven to distill desire and despair to a very potent drop.