Tour report from Helsinki 12.3.2010

We found land on Friday 12.3.2010 from helsinki city. The band and the bus had a pain smelling nine hours on the road to the capitol of our precious land. The case was different now, a rockhouse we had never been sharing our art before. We used the power of our minds to unpack the bus and checked out the vitality of the sounds. We were ready to go. Again the huge masses seemed to miss us but the hardcore beauties and listeners were at the scene. That’s enough for us.

We started the screaming as soon as the spinal tap had closed their part in our show. I loved it, we loved it, again. The main soundgod in the rockhouse forced us to lower the gain of our beautiful sounds but it did ruin us this time. Naturally we put everything on the spot and succeeded. The evening was lovely.

It was a pleasure to meet my former hometown and the friends who still makes love with Helsinki. Some catching up with friens, few drinks and to bed.

In the morning I woke up little past 10 to throw up my guts out. It was unreal. The disease continued murdering me thru the whole trip back to the north. I threw up in the bus, at the gas station on the side of the road until I cried and threw up. Meanwhile the other guys drank some beer. At the twilight zone little before our northern hometown I had given my everything to the disease and I cried some more.

Just when I though I survived our newly born drummer Ike started to throw up. He threw up, again, again and again. On the side of the road, at the gas station, from the window of the moving bus, it was everywhere. The disease had caught him. Ike struggled his way back home until we were at our hometown, at our rehearsal place. We drove for 11 hours.

The band was dead meat and crying for mercy and a teleport to home and to own bed. The disease murdered us at home too, but still we were home. Helsinki when we will meet again?? We are ready, again.

Performing art at Turku 24.02.2010

As we landed at the gates of middle-age I was hoping to meet the assumed founder of this gorgeous city. The pope Gregorius IX who wrote a letter to find a better residence to his diocese placed the land of Turku. I didn’t meet the guy, It’s sad. Pretty soon after the arrival it hit me; we had neglected this beautiful city far too long.

The local rockhouse welcomed us with a warm surprise, no backstage, no food, no drinks (even water) and nevertheless no toilet. A beautiful evening started to raise its head. Soon after we had unpacked our massive zafira bus we put on our crew sweaters and our technical crew saw the daylight again. The crew placed our stage correctly and meanwhile we tried to find something to hang our backdrop with Ike, we found nothing.

We checked the lines by slapping the guitar few times and found out that the monitors on the stage were dead. It didn’t defeat us. The schedule was killing our sound check so we handed the stage to the first band Beyond the dream.

The local rockhouse put the best of it that night by swallowing the underground ears to the event with echoing results. We loved it.

At midnight it was our time and we did the best show ever like every single night. We succeeded on our goals and we were unhappy. The art started to dance in the air after the 2 minutes musical school of spinal tap before us, it was so great.

5 minutes after our gold plated show the local rockhouse died. We went downstairs bar to take few pictures with our precious listeners. The night screamed to order few drinks to the guys, except to me. My bus driver jacket was already hanging beneath my eyes and the time was setting it limits to our lives again.

On the morning we washed our balls in the luxury suite with water boiler and everything and I though again I’m so special to have this privilege. It felt almost like too much for me.

On the road back to our northern base(ment) I wondered what is the fire that keeps us doing this. And as I was thinking I found out that we made a one-shot performance, drove 1400 kilometers, travelled for two days and played with fire for 45 minutes. Like always I didn’t find the answer. But I was tired.

As we had been eating the road for the whole day I went back to home. I saw the shimmering eyes of my little boy when he jumped to my arms at the door of my beautiful home. I was no longer tired I had already forgotten the torturing trip. I put on my daddy shirt and was ready again. Whenever, wherever, whatever it takes.

Hello there all you people and fans all around the world! Lots of things going on in our camp and at the moment we’re working hard to get all new graphical stuff finished. In practice this means album cover art, merchandise (shirts&hoodies at least), new promo pics etc. And yes, we’re also doing a music video on January!

Here is one sample from promo picture session. Photo is taken by Vesa Ranta.

Finally we’re finished with all the recordings. It was such a hell of a process and took totally almost two whole months. Not that we were recording every day nine-to-five but still. At this point feelings are quite confused and I don’t have much to say about anything. Head is empty from ideas and I think all of us gave everything we had to give.

Today we’ll listen songs through once more before sending them to Mr.Hiilesmaa for mixing. Mixing process will be finished on 27th of September and mastering follows later. Album release is now initially scheduled for February 2010.

More pics and videos follow later.

Vocal recordings are progressing all the time, here is some photos from studio.

During the weekend (Friday-Saturday) we recorded the vocals for two more songs. In my opinion, these songs are among the top five of the new ones. Recording progress were quite similar as with the previous songs and we made the vocals for the both tracks completely ready. Thought another of these songs will still probably feature the guest vocalist. His name will be announced later.

Sunday was dedicated to the rest of the Jupe’s vocal cords and next session would take place today. We still have a lots to do but we’re on schedule and will record five or six songs during this week.

Yesterday we started the vocal recordings at Parkstreet studio in Heinäpää, Oulu. First two songs to be recorded were “The Man Cage” and “Written on My Skin”. Both of them represents the darker side of the album and the recording booth was just perfect to get the right mood for them.

For the vocal recordings we used the Rode NTV tube microphone and patched it through Focusrite ISA 220 pre-amp. It sounded very good and with just a bit of compression, it was easy to get good presence and enough power for the vocal tracks.

We decided to do each song completely ready before proceeding to the next one. So, after about four and half hours all vocal tracks, including the harmonies, were done for the first two songs.

On Sunday 16th of August all rhythm guitar parts were done and I was able to continue the bass recordings. Some of the songs just needed the guitars first to be able to make the final bass arrangements. I started with a song called “Doom” (working title) and very soon founded out that intro is not working at all and it needs to be completely re-arranged. I played some “demo” bass track for that one and left it as it is. I have to get back on that later with the other guys. Another song for that day was “Joiku” and it was quite basic stuff and track was laid down quite quickly. Clock was already getting close to midnight so I decided to continue tomorrow.

I earlier noticed that nights are best time for me to play. So I started the recordings on Monday not earlier than 20 o’clock. Again, I was in the right mood and playing felt good. I listened to the songs with guitars and picked some drum fills etc. and started to play the first one. All three songs went quite smoothly and about at 23 o’clock I was ready with them. There were only one own song left and as it is the only one that is played with the fingers, I thought it was good to do it some other day.

On Tuesday we had a listening session with all of the guys and we went throught all the songs and discussed about if they need something more or if there is already too much stuff. Most of the songs sounded good as they were, but some of the songs needs still some fine tuning and maybe some more guitars.

After the listening session, I warmed up a little bit and started to play the last song (that one is also probably going to be the last track on the album). Bass sound was slightly different (played with fingers) than in other songs but it worked for this one very well. There is a one of the weirdest drum fills of the album on this track and it was must for me to pick that one with bass. It took some time to figure out how the fill was played but in the end it was worth of every second as the result sounded even weirder now. Again it was almost midnight, but I was very happy as all of my bass parts were now done! Tomorrow we’ll listen them all once more and do the necessary corrections.

We (Juhani & Ilkka) started the guitar recordings on friday 7th of August. On the first weekend we played rhythm guitars to four songs (now called “Moscow Nights”, “Leiden”, “Link(ki)” and “Dee Dee”). During the next week we played some overdups and completed the rhythm guitars to “Chemical”. We also got a visit from mister “C” alias Hiili Hiilesmaa.

We continued the rhythm guitar session on the next weekend. Friday and saturday were very fruitful – we got the train on move – and we got the rest rhythm guitars played (to songs now titled “Doom”, “GNR”, “Breaking”, “Burned”, “Joiku”, “Lärttä” and “Alice”).

The recordings included some nice tryouts. For example, some songs required a lower tuning to work so we bought a pair of baritone guitar strings and tuned guitars all the way down to C sharp (strings that are LOUDER – they go on 11). This tuning actually created very distinctive sound that worked really well with songs played on C sharp.

In general ,we have cut down the amount of guitar tracks to make the record that “has more air” and is closer to how we sound live. We expect this to give more space to drums and bass and on the other hand to give also room to different kinds of guitar sounds. We have been listening the songs and choosed sounds, that supports the song, the lyrics and the feeling of each song. This hopefully leads to rich and nice sounding album that has the original sound that we have on our boutique amps (vs. the traditional Marshall or Mesa/Boogie sound used in this genre).

On sunday we’ll start to play guitar leads and solos..

On Wednesday 5.8. I started to record my bass parts in our own studio that is actually the same place where we rehearse. I had already changed the strings to my Amfisound bass earlier so I could start to find good sound right away. I ended up using quite simple and basic setup. I used SansAmp Programmable Bass Driver DI for the line sound and miked my Ampeg stack with Shure Beta57 and Sennheiser e602. Combination of these three sounds worked very well and after checking the tune once more, I started to play the first song.

Working title for the first song was “Leiden” and it’s probably the slowest one of the new songs. I checked the drum tracks and made some arrangements based on them. After couple of test takes I played the whole song once more and the basses for the first one was done! I also recorded one another song during that night and decided to continue later with rest of the stuff.

During the Thursday and Friday, I played four more songs with similar method. Now, totally six songs were done and I was in the halfway of bass recordings. It was time to continue with the rhythm guitar parts and do the rest of basses after them.

To be continued…