misplaced backstory:

Yes, the second SSTB release is done and released. It does seem that 3 years is a minimum for any of my projects. The compositional phase (2014-2016) was probably more or less simultaneous with the material of “Second Wind”, these songs were markedly different from the prog/metal genre of Liquid Wolf,  there being similarities of course. These, once again, found themselves in front of the positively critical ears and mind of Teijo Tikkanen some time during the summer of 2016. In one lengthy session we managed to go thru and weed basically all of the songs that later surfaced on the album. I might be repeating myself, but it always is a real hoot to work with the guy, he just finds the best ways to make these songs come alive.

Blacks & Blues backstory:

The first release is basically done, some vocals need to be remade, but the mixing will start February 2014 anyway. Release either in May or August. All the playing and singing was done by yours truly and Teijo Tikkanen. Some soulful bvoxes were sung by three gorgeous ladies: Anu Wuori, Riikka Muikku and Satu Wilkman. Stay tuned!

Little Things backstory

This time it’s a bit different.

It was slightly over a year ago I noticed I had some extra time on my hands. My other musical activities were more or less on hold. The second SSTB release, “misplaced” in retrospect feels like a divider and/or the end of an era. The “rock-first” attitude of distorted guitars etc was maybe coming to an end. Some inkling of things to come could already be felt on it, but not enough!

The demos had been piling up, I once again needed a second pair of ears in order to judge the potential of them. Aki Sihvonen, who mixed “misplaced”, felt the right choice this time around. So I took maybe 30 bits and pieces and we went through them weening the selection to 15 possible song germs. I took the seeds and cultivated them into songs during the spring and summer of ’22. By intention or by chance the songs evolved into a more “modern” direction. The sounds and arrangements clearly lean more towards modern indie sound than to my basic 80’s tinged comfort zone. And I’m so glad that they do! Of course it’s still recognizably me but it shows a definite path towards new vistas. Well, you of course will judge for yourself but I’m very satisfied!

In August we convened again and had a second listening/weeding session. One quite potential song, “Catch” had emerged during summer so we had 16 songs to choose from. The agreed goal was to keep the total duration of the album at around 45-50 minutes, so we needed to drop quite a few songs. 4 were found there and then, so it was 12 songs. As my songs usually are a bit longer than the norm, somewhere around 5 mins, it was obvious that some of the selected songs would not make it to the album but that decision was luckily somewhere in the future. All 12 would be made all the way to the end.

We discussed the personnel required: guitars and vocals would naturally be my purview, Aki felt at first (and me as well) that maybe we should hire a bass player but the demos quite clearly told that I should do the basses as well. Ok, so who would play the drums? I had 2 obvious choices in mind, Sami Kuoppamäki and Miri Miettinen. Sami and his musical approach to drumming and unbeatable (!) groove has been my #1 choice since PS. and Liquid Wolf. Miri, the low key groovemeister,  had shown his capabilities by playing on all of the Lighthouse Sparrows songs. Few others were bandied as well, but those two were settled on pretty quickly. Luckily both were willing and able as well! Keyboards? A no-brainer: Teijo Tikkanen would be the one to play all the “real” keyboard parts and I would do the basic stuff. So we had the guys in the band, let’s go!

The demos provided quite a solid backbone to lean on, so it was just a matter to do them better where required, actually quite a bit of the original playing was kept. The arrangements were fine tuned with Aki’s help. When it came the time to do the drums, I had came across Valtteri Tuominen, whose assistance proved to be invaluable to the process. He recorded Sami’s drums @ Finnvox Studio B during one intense weekend (with the micing supervising done by the unimitable Risto Hemmi), did the session prepping, necessary editing and other recordings plus sang backing vocals! Quite a find. Other “real” recordings were done at Finnvox Studio F, we did acoustic guitars and Ella Erikssons backing vocals there. We had one more guest, Vilma Peltokangas on cello. She did 2 tracks, “Promises” and “On a Sunday” (Finnvox Studio B, Valtteri recording). Some electric and acoustic guitars were recorded at my studio by Valtteri, but most of the electric guitars, basses, keys and vocals I recorded myself in my lair.

Once the recordings were done, it was time to mix. As I is usual nowadays, the songs were being mixed along the way and so the final mixing was a pretty straightforward procedure, first rounds at home and the final tweaks in a proper monitoring environment of Finnvox Studio F.

Mastering, as always, was done by Pauli Saastamoinen at Finnvox. I had the opportunity to check the mixes at studio G (Pauli’s mastering suite) and did some necessary but quite minor tweaks accordingly. Now was the time to decide on the running order and to drop the 2 songs in order to keep the running time under 1 hour…Not easy, but after some discussions with Aki it was decided that “Confessions”, the other instrumental and “No Real Reason” would be dropped.