 You take a teenage busker influenced by the classic singer-songwriter tradition and a former heavy metal guitarist who has grown bored with speed-rock and is looking for something a little more soulful. You put them together to write some songs. Along the way they fall in love and make a beguiling album of country-tinged melodic rock that takes them to the top of the Danish charts.
That, in a nutshell, is the story of Hush. Except this is real life and so inevitably it's somewhat more complicated that that - not least because seven years and a whole lot of struggle separate the beginning of the tale above and their success today.
And in a way, the story has only just begun. The Danes have somewhat selfishly kept Hush and their album “A Lifetime” to themselves since its release there a year ago. Now via the international release of the album, the world is finding out about them too. And now the secret is out, there's going to be an awful lot of noise about Hush over the coming months.
 Listening to the album, it's hard to believe that guitarist Michael Hartmann began his career in heavy metal bands, having left his native Denmark at an early age to make his way in America. "I lived in LA for a while and played speed-rock. That was the stuff I was into. But I grew bored with its limitations and wanted to do something that was more real and had more subtlety and nuance," he says.
By 1997 he was back in his home town of Randers in Denmark, where he set up his own home studio and began the search for a female vocalist who could help give shape to his new, gentler musical vision. Enter Dorthe Gerlach, at the time just 17 and still at school. "My dad heard her busking in the town square one day and said I should go and check her out," he recalls.
Steeped in her parent's record collection of classic '70s rock and singer-songwriters such as Tracy Chapman and Suzanne Vega, Dorthe came form a very different musical background. But as soon as Michael heard her sing, he knew her voice was exactly what he was looking for.
His first approach received short shrift. "He asked if I'd I like to come to his studio and record something. But I didn't know if he was after my money or what, so I sent him packing," she laughs.
 He persisted and after a second visit, Dorthe was persuaded that he was serious. "He was so persistent I agreed to go his studio and we did a song and it was immediately obvious it was going to work," she says. "It was magical."
The band they set about forming became Hush. A reaction to Michael's speed-rock past? "Maybe it was," he says. "Somehow the name just sounded right. We wanted to make music that was melodic and not in-your-face and Hush seemed to sum it up." Initially the band was a seven piece, but as success proved elusive, other members fell by the wayside and it wasn't long before there were only two of them left. "We were the stubborn ones," Dorthe says.
But by now the two had fallen in love as well, and so the duo made perfect sense. And as Hush's music by necessity became more sparse and pared down, in that simplicity, they found the sound they had been searching for all along.
"I can date the moment when it fell into place exactly," Michael says. "It was the summer of 2000 and we were playing in a church, just the two of us.
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