Like a tall tale from the heart of Moominpapa’s memoirs the story of the lost music of Moominvalley has remained a mystery for what seems like an eternity. Or perhaps 33 years to be more accurate. Since the first time the homemade Wasp synth and ocarina driven theme tune and eerie incidental themes first made their soft landings on the UK Children’s ITV, nostalgia nuts, acid folk fans and electro acoustic aficionados have been united by a fruitless yearning for those misplaced melodies and that last comforting synth note that resolved each episode of what was perhaps the most freakish Fuzzy-Felt five minutes to flicker onto our small screens during the 80′s wonder years.
Born in Helsinki, made in Warsaw, by a German and Austrian co-operative, and finally soundtracked in Leeds in the north of England, the translated and reconstituted tales of Moomintroll, Snuffkin and The Hattifattners (amongst a handcrafted cast of many) first came to our screens as an early exploration of Anne Wood (later creator the equally freakish Teletubbies) who after stripping the Polish and German audio commissioned a new experimental soundtrack from the collective social circles of The Impact Theatre Co-Operative, Gang Of Four and The Commies From Mars. Finally retrieved from the outer limits of it’s cross continental breadcrumb trail Finders Keepers invite you one step further into the vault with a bizarre Christmas release that fills the gaps between the aforementioned micro-genres and experimental subcultures that flourished in light of domestic synth technology, fuelled by alternative and progressive pop culture as an antidote to the disenfranchised political backdrop of 1980s Britain.

Imagine, if you will, a foreboding homemade electro-acoustic, new age, synth driven, proto-techno, imaginary world music Portastudio soundtrack for a Polish-made animated fantasy based on a Finnish modern folk tale and created for German and Austrian TV, composed in 1982 by two politically driven post-punk theatre performers from a shared house in Leeds!
To even the most perspicacious and adventurous of alternative music fans the genuine bloodline of this previously unreleased record already begins to sound like an entire record collection in one sitting. It would be surprising if this project’s ambitious and exotic credentials didn’t tick at least one box on your musical matrix and without one drop of unnecessary nostalgic hyperbole this project already sounds like the perfect fantasy record that you’ve never heard. Alternatively we could just say The Moomins and, for many, things would instantly begin to make perfect sense.
From the same social landscape as Gang Of Four, The Mekons and Impact Theatre Co-operative – armed with a Wasp synthesiser, an ocarina and a cassette of the Robinson Crusoe music taped off the TV, Graeme Miller and Steve Shill used minimum means for maximum mayhem, instilling over 35 years of dreamlike illusory fuzziness and freakiness into the memories of a generation of school age TV addicts waiting for the next 5 minute fix of outernational fuzzy felt folklore. Collected here, all in one place for the first time, Finders Keepers in close collaboration with the original composers finally bring the original homemade micro-melodies and reintroduce them to a musical landscape where fans of vintage electronics, concrète tape effects, pocket percussion and domestic synths are finally ready to be reunited with the magnetic music of Moominvalley.