Slow

Slow or DJ Slow (born Vellu Maurola, 1975, in Vantaa, Finland) is a Finnish DJ and music producer. His first encounters with hip hop acts such as Run-DMC, Public Enemy and Eric B & Rakim led him to pursue career in DJing, later making music and remixing others tracks. Slow is known for his nu-jazz style and for his production of commercial music for high-profile projects for advertising, TV, and cinema.
 
In the year 1990 Slow met JA-Jazz who was also a DJ and worked at the same department store's music department, where Slow worked. With money accrued from his evening job, Slow bought a pair of Technics turntables and good bunch of records.
 
He participated in the Finnish DMC Mixing Championships and won the contest four years in a row: in 1992, 1993, 1994 and 1995. Winning performances were based on strong scratching skills, beatmatching and a little bit of acrobatics. Equipment used was two Technics SL-1200 direct-drive turntables and a DJ mixer and musical styles ranged from hip hop to funk and jazz.
 
Slow's friendship with JA-jazz continued and in 1995 Ja-Jazz introduced him to James Spectrum and together they formed a band called Pepe Deluxé. Their style could be described as a mixture of big beat, trip-hop, and hip hop. Band's first outing was an 1998 EP titled Three Times a Player, which was chosen as Record of the month on Muzik magazine. Pepe Deluxé's first full-length album, Super Sound was released 1999 by UK's Catskills Records. 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. New version of the album was released subsequently in France, Italy, Spain, The Netherlands, the U.S., Australia, and Germany.
 
One track from the album, &Woman in Blue&, later renamed Before You Leave was chosen by Levi's jeans' ad agency to be featured on their worldwide advertising campaign in 2001.
 
During this time Pepe Deluxe guys were also asked to do remixes to artists like Tom Jones, The Cardigans, and Eminem. After lot of promoting and concerts around the world, Slow decided to depart from the group because he wanted to pursue solo projects.
 
Between 1999 and 2001 worked as Head of A&R at EMI Finland, launching a new dance label called Nozle. The label released singles from dance acts such as Campaus, Z-MC, and Jori Hulkkonen's Step Time Orchestra. Campaus was a dance act Slow started with a Finnish producer Rauli Eskolin.
 
In 2002 Slow formed SlowHill with Finnish saxophonist Tapani Rinne, known for his band RinneRadio. The band fused jazz sounds with electronic beats and got their first album Finndisc released on Blue Note Records. On the same year, DJ Slow's single called &Got to Funk& went to number 1 in the Finnish dance chart and peaked at number 19 on the Finnish singles chart. The track was originally made for Hartwall's Upcider drink commercial but due to the huge demand from the audience and DJ's, he decided to make it a proper track and release is as a single.
 
In 2003 Slow worked on lot of remixes such as The Crash's track Star and TV series scores for Finnish television.
 
In 2004 Slow released his debut album This Is Now and started a weekly radio show Burner on Helsinki's Groove FM with hip hopper Paleface.
 
In 2005 SlowHill released their second album Fennika on Plastinka Records, did remixes e.g. To BWO's Sixteen Tons of Hardware. With Tapani Rinne, Slow made also the score for Finnish movie Koti-ikävä which was nominated for the Finland's equivalent to Oscar, the Jussi.
 
Year 2006 was a turning point in Slow's career in many ways. He was invited to play a set at Midem International Music Market's 40th anniversary opening night in Cannes. He also released his second album Pronto!, later that year the album was also released in Japan by Columbia Records. He also played at the Wallpaper magazine's design awards in London, Milan's furniture fair at Artek's pavilion, Klara Festival in Brussels, and produced music for Nokia, Ikea, and Finlandia Vodka among others, developing into the most sought-after commercial music composers in Finland.
 
In 2010 SlowHill returned with their third album, titled Muzak.