Second PS. CD. Done mainly at Seawolf Studios.
Shortly after the “Ajan Virrassa” was ready, I was keen to start making new songs. It felt nice to have shed all the old songs and be able to start making fresh ones. Quite quickly we had skeletons for 10-ish songs. This time we felt that it would be nice to have a core band that would rehearse and execute the songs. The players we chose offered no surprises: we chose Jaakko Kiikeri and Ari Hujanen. Gtrs and drums respectively. We had around 8 rehearsals and were ready for studio. Hannu and Petri offered us the chance to record at Seawolf’s “B studio” at Customs museum on the other side of Suomenlinna (the main studio was being built). Petri helped us build the set and my good friend Juha Tamminen agreed to record us. We took 2-3 days and got the backing tracks done.
The overdubs were done at Perfect Sound Studios mkIV. Once they were done, it was time to get the songs sung. Hannu was the obvious choice and he delivered, once again. We decided to have some strings on 2 songs as well. Pauli did the arrangements and strings were recorded, this time Kari Chydenius, my mentor was the engineer.
OK, the songs were taking shape, but something was missing still. I made an instrumental called “Kohnaa” (as in kohina ie. noise as one of the rhythm figures was built from a pink noise sample). I had some doubts of Ari’s quite laid back drumming and asked Kepa Kettunen to participate. He played drums for “Elekieltä” and “Pimeää V2”, a remix I did with a Roland VP-9000. I had asked a few colleagues to remix some songs and did actually get “Kellot” from Vekke Mäki and “Peli” from DJ Orkidea. I don’t know why they were left out, but I will locate and insert them ASAP.
Percussion was expertly played by Mamba Assefa and especially on “Vaahtopäät” it helps a lot to create the melancholic soundscape. On top of it is one of Hannus greatest performances, talk about goosebumps! Actually the whole song (about the divorce of a close friend) is performance wise (and perhaps compositionally as well) a true highlight of my recorded output. Listen:
[spotify id=”spotify:track:2c7si2qdKMfBMZhysnRESi” width=”300″ height=”340″ /]
As we had some strings, I thought it would be fun to have some brass as well. My friend Juha Lappalainens brother Matti was a well known trombonist so I asked him to make arrangements for “Saippuakuplia” and “Uusi Seikkailu”. He asked his friends Heikki pohto (sax) and Jukka Tiirikainen (tpt) to play at the session.
The mixing took place at Seawolfs spanking new mix room. Hannu basically mixed the record, we had our say as well, of course. In the last minutes I made a new song “Sanat Viiltää” that I really wanted to include, so we arranged a session at Lauri Paloposkis Sky Gospel studio. Ari took his new Gretsch set and delivered a great performance, we did the rest with Pauli.
On this record I’m mainly a bassist, but had my guitar moments as well. When we were done, I was slightly disappointed and felt that Hannu had not delivered the mixes I had hoped for. When I revisited the album a while ago, I was positively surprised: It’s a very good package that sounds and feels very good, I’m very glad I was proven wrong. It’s actually in retrospect the most balanced CD we made.