Category Archives: Yleinen

It’s hard to believe

It’s over a year from my previous post. My apologies. Let’s see what has happened after “Two” was released…

Liquid Wolf:
We (as in my son Jarno and myself) came upon an idea to make a sort of a scifi-story of travelers thrown to the mercy of rogue AI (way before ChatGPT ;-)) during their travel to their new home planet somewhere in the cosmos. The story starts like this:

“Saso Kitanoski adjusted the sharpened slab of metal strapped to his thigh, tightening the harness that kept the cable spool on his back, and made his way forward in the quiet rumble and bioluminescent glow through the corridors of the engine block.  . 

The route that he took every month came to a larger crossroads, where two arching hallways intersected. With the quiet whir of the spool behind him whispering to a stop, he listened intently to the quiet hum, focusing his ears to their limit, trying to find something out of place. “

This story inspired me and Teijo to dream up a multidimensional LW project that would encompass the short story, music and visuals. While visiting Teijo @ Nurmes in October 2021 I made lyrics based on the story and we made some progress re music. This has been an ongoing project ever since. There’s over 60 minutes of music at various stages of readiness. None is finalised so this will take a while still.

SSTB:

While waiting for The Ark’s story to develop further, I noticed once again that a healthy pile of rock/pop oriented songs were waiting their completion. This time around Teijo was engaged in his funk project so I approached Aki SIhvonen (who mixed misplaced) with the demos and we weeded out and refined the selection to 16 songs. I prepared more polished versions of those during the spring/early summer 2022. Of those demos 12 songs were selected to be made with a plan to drop 2 songs after completion. So I would have 10 strong songs and a nice lenght for an album. Aki helped along the way and Teijo played quite a bit of keyboards. I took care of guitars, basses and basic keys plus of course lead and background vocals. Drums are handled by two very capable musicians, Sami Kuoppamäki and Miri Miettinen. Sami, who has been my go-to drummer for Liquid Wolf and some other projects, plays on 8 songs and Miri, our Lighthouse Sparrows stickman, plays on 4. My very capable assistant, Valtteri Tuominen, helped with recording and editing plus he also sang backing vocals. Ella Eriksson aka ellaella 🙂 put a cherry on top with her lovely voice on backing vocals. The album “Little Things” will be released in August 2023 ( I still don’t know which 2 songs I have to drop…).

Lighthouse Sparrows:

Olli made music for television dramaseries “The Invincibles” so all his creative juice was spent there for quite a while. We of course had some demo bits and pieces that we made during this time but new music was on hold until around February 2023. We then started to go thru the demos and make some new stuff. As of today we have 6-7 songs in decent shape. We’re planning to have a 4-5 song EP ready to be released some time in the fall.

Work:

Quite a bit of mixing done.
• Helsinki Syndrome (TV series, 8 episodes)
• The Invincibles (TV series, 8 episodes)
• Reindeer Mafia (TV series, 8 episodes)
• Dance Brothers (Netflix series, 10 episodes)
• Siblings (Feature)
• The Twin (Feature)
• What Remains (Feature)
ETCetc


Lighthouse Sparrows – AERIALS

We’re pretty far re our full length release titled “AERIALS”. All 11 songs have been mixed, sort of. I’ve made version 1 mixes of all and they actually sound pretty damn nice! I’m still going to go to Finnvox Studios and use the beutiful sounding (and looking!) Studio F to go thru the songs a second time. I’m convinced that they will get quite a bit better still. Of course 2 songs are already mastered (Safe and Sound & Elephant) as they were released as singles during this fall, so actually I have only 9 songs to plow through.

Pate Pesonius, our art director, has already almost finished with the cover art so as soon as I’ve gone thru the songs and Olli has approved the mixes, they will be delivered to Pauli Saastamoinen @ Finnvox Mastering. Pauli will master both vinyl and digital versions of the album. We are facing the challenge of selecting the “correct” songs for the vinyl as the space is quite limited (about 45 minutes), we have a bit over on hour of material…

The singles can be found here:

Lighthouse Sparrows – Elephant

We released a new single “Elephant” last friday (28.05.2021). Basic crew, myself on guitars, basses, backing vocals etc, Olli on lead vocals and keys plus Miri on drums. As on the previous single “Safe and Sound”, Ella E. provided lovely backing vocals. Mixed by yours truly, mastered by the one and only Pauli Saastamoinen @ Finnvox. Cover as per usual by Pate Pesonius, cover image by Vincent Ledvina / Unsplash.

Liquid Wolf resurrecting

Yes, after a prolonged hiatus (been busy on all other fronts…) I managed to round up the guys and we did a song called “Plight”. It’s out on this friday from all mojor streaming platforms. This time around Miri Miettinen sat on the drum stool, but otherwise the line-up is the same: Me on guitars, some keys, some basses and background vocals, Teijo on lead vocals and lead keys, Samu on bass, Pepa on wind instruments and Pekka on vibes. Hope You enjoy it!

No excuses

Yes, three years went by. The Inertia album “New Obstacles” was released in 2018, after that the band was in a bit of a turmoil as Tomi decided to explore other avenues and we looked for a new drummer. I think it was around jan/feb 2019 when we found him. Adam, our new drummer proved to be a right choice, he’s a heavy hitter with a groove!

Well, Adam was the right choice but otherwise Inertia was stuck in a bit of a rut. After a few of quite lengthy pauses I decided to call it quits. So no more Inertia, but those songs will surface eventually!

Another lengthy project, the second album of SSTB is mastered and waiting to be released in a few weeks. The album’s called “Misplaced” and it has nine songs. This is how I describe it in the back cover:
“Misplaced was conceived during writing and arranging sessions @ T-Sonics Studio  & Perfect Sound Studio in 2016-2017. Sami brought the songs and Teijo the insight and inspiration. After a bit of a hiatus, the parts were finalised and in 2019 the nine songs were delivered to Aki Sihvonen at Finnvox Studios for mixing. Aki proved to be the missing link in the chain delivering great mixes that opened up the songs. Mixes were done by January 2020. Then it was just a matter of some of Pauli Saastamoinens gold dust in mastering and the cake was done. Well baked!

What else? Lots of audio post, mainly mixing, some features, some documents, some series:
Baby Jane, Olen Suomalainen, Heinähattu & Vilttitossu ja Ärhäkkä koululainen, Aalto, Luontosinfonia, Bullets, Karppi season 2, Kalifornian Commando, Luonnonlaki, Bitter Love, Invisible Heroes, Typhoon Mama, Nti Aika, Beloved Daughter etcetc

One new project feels quite exciting; we made 5 songs under “Lighthouse Sparrows” moniker with my friend and colleague Olli Huhtanen. They’re modern prog (surprise!), the songs are composed and arranged, waiting for the recordings to start. We’ll see…

OK, ’til next time!

The new me

Well, sorta….I’m rethinking and focusing my web presence. All the sites pertaining to me ie. perfectsound.fi and .com, liquidwolf.net, samsararecords.fi and this one are being moved under one roof. Stay tuned…