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…

On sunday 19.7. we collected all necessary gear together and headed to Mastervox studios in our lovely hometown Oulu. First day was just basically setting up the drum kit; changing drumheads, tuning and miking. There was a new and quite big recording room in the studio and the drum kit sounded very good without any further processing. We left from the studio right after that and decided to continue in the next morning at 11 o’clock.

It was such a warm day on monday and we started the sweaty sessions as planned. First we listened to the demo versions of the songs couple of times and then started with the first song which is called “Moscow Nights”. After couple of takes first song was done and we continued with next one. Totally five songs were recorded on that day and in the end of the day we listened to the songs once more and all of us were very satisfied with the outcome. Again, we left from the studio quite early and headed to the centrum to have couple of beers and some fisu of course.

Tuesday we had such a similar day as monday, except that we managed to get even six songs done during that day. Once again, happy with the achievements of the day, we left from the studio. There was only one song left for the wednesday and after couple of beers we got some good ideas about doing one cover song as we have some studio time still left. I (Mikko) also had time to do some last time fine tunings in our new bar (Nuclear Nightclub), which was scheduled to be opened in next day. Luckily everything seemed to be quite ok already so I just decided to go home and rest for a while. Last day of the recordings and the bar opening, next day is going to be very long..

None of us didn’t seemed to suffer from bad hangover so it was good time to head to the studio and do the rest of the job. We started with the last one of our own songs. That song was still quite unfinished and we actually haven’t played that song ever together and it didn’t even have vocal melodies yet ready. But it wasn’t problem to do good drums for that one and in the end it was done very very fast. Next we checked the original version of that one cover song and as it doesn’t actually contain much drums, we had to do some arrangements with it. Our version is going to be totally different and it was also nice to work with some bit more unknown tune. After the cover song was done, we left from the studio and headed straightly to Alko to buy a big bottle of Fisu and started to prepare for the bar opening.