With less than a dozen singles, numerous remixes and a solitary full-length album to their credit, released in 2002, there is no arguing that Nuspirit Helsinki have created a strong and lasting impression. "Our Favorite Things" is a concept compilation series launched by ObliqSound via Backdrop in order to present music "freely and thoughtfully selected by notable genre-bending artists, in the spirit of legendary collections like Back To Mine and Late Night Tales." Nuspirit Helsinki took the helm on this series' maiden voyage.

1. Aisha Duo "Beneath An Evening Sky"
2. Joakim "Peter Pan Over the Bronx"
3. Trentemoller "Miss You"
4. Korpi Ensemble "A Moment of Love (Tuomas Kallio's Nuspirit Helsinki Electrodub Mix)"
5. Tales In Tones Trio "Sabari"
6. Fluegelschlag! "Mendiani (Wai Wan UK Remix)"
7. The Five Corners Quintet "Before We Say Goodbye (feat. Mark Murphy)(Jori Hulkkonen Remix)"
8. CocoRosie "Noah's Ark"
9. Detektivbyran "Nattöppet"
10. Fluegelschlag! "Zwei Elfen"

Whether or not you're familiar with the ObliqSound imprint or its sublabel Backdrop, if you know what nu jazz is all about, you'd be lying if you said you've never heard of Nuspirit Helsinki. More than perhaps any others, they became a figurehead of the Nu Jazz genre.

Three words sum up the first song you'll hear and it's the feeling you get from this compilation as a whole: warm and soft. The song's title is "Beneath an Evening Sky" and Italian jazz outfit Aisha Duo are the composers. Listening to it is like pausing in the middle of whatever you're doing to focus intensely on drops of water hanging from a roof and slowly, randomly dropping one after another. Or it may be like an animated scene where orange, glowing glass globes float around, emanating ripples with each soft vibraphonic tone. If you don't want to get that fancy, just turn on the visualization effect in the latest update of iTunes and then just stare quietly at the screen.

If you keep following these images throughout the entirety of Our Favorite Things, even though the tempo may increase at times, they'll never be out of place. Each song pretty much drips in perfectly random time, one after another. From Joakim's "Peter Pan Over the Bronx" to Trentmoller's "Miss You", the sounds all but blend into one beautiful, cerebral tranquilizer.

Korpi Ensemble gently shakes you out of the quiet with a pop-oriented love song called "A Moment of Love", remixed by Nuspirit Helsinki's Tuomas Kallio. From here Tales in Tones Trio bring some dusty, minimal jazz, and after that Flugelschlag! brings in some afrobeat influence, before Five Corners Quintet deepens the jazz sound, with a very housed out bossa nova mix of "Before We Say Goodbye" by Jori Hulkonnen.

CocoRosie brings back the sweetness, in a warbly, sort of sweet way with "Noah's Ark". While CocoRosie hinted at a sort of nursery rhyme sound, Detektivbyran comes right out with it on a song called "Nattöpet". Flugelschlag! return and bring a close to the compilation with a somber, jazz piano solo called "Zwei Elfen".

Our Favorite Things steps across a number of musical boundaries, with the songs being lightly mixed from one to the next. The prevailing tone is so warm you'll just want to wrap yourself up in it, like a wool blanket on an uncommonly brisk Fall night.

** Please note that the track listing printed on the CD goes out of order from track 5 though 8. The correct track listing is shown above **

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