So…on reviewing the first part, I noticed I’ve missed a big part, namely FlipSide. So:

January and February went mainly in recording the guitars and vocals for the first ep. The 4 songs were coming together quite nicely, only Diving Down tried to resist and had to be rethought a bit.

Come March and Ari announced, quite unexpectedly, that he had had enough and would not continue with us. Bit baffled, but still willing to continue, we decided to carry on by the two of us. We started a new song then and there and continued, basically once a week, composing and arranging new songs…

OK, back to the agenda: the last half of 2013 went like this:

June – My cousin Eeva, a talented singer/songwriter operating under the alias Tiger Angle, had more songs to make, so we started going through them. The three songs, Number of Truth, Still Water and It Must be Right were demoed with just an acoustic guitar and vocals, I would listen to them and give some ideas for possible arrangements later on. Work on various Brink Helsinki projects continued, now it was My CashFlow 2. My Samsara Records artists Antero Raimo & Ovet had been in “ice” for a while, but were now active again. We made plans for the release of their CD and agreed on one more session. We would record the 2 songs needed, Stressi and Hanki. They would be the 9th and 10th song needed for the CD (we had made the songs 1-8 earlier in 2012). I found out that my backup of our old sessions had been corrupted, so we also needed to record their old favourite, Mustikanpoimintaa, once again.
The week before the midsummer was spent mixing the Virpi Suutari documentary “Puutarha-ihmisiä (North of Eden)” with Olli Huhtanen at Cinepost.
Then came the big weekend, the midsummer session with Teijo, recording the backing tracks for SSTB’s 11 songs. I asked my friend and colleague Anttoni to assist and record, which he did. During those 2 days we managed

the 11 songs, Futile was to be rearranged later but the original drums stayed on. The general consensus was that the session was a success and laid an excellent ground for later work.
While Teijo was around, we also checked the status of Alpha Indigo mixes. We made some corrections and additions and agreed that we were almost there…;-).

July – The official “Finland is closed” month, time for SSTB and Tiger Angle. I spent some days playing and recording guitars for the songs, I also managed to arrange Futile to my satisfaction. Tiger Angle songs were finding their shape and we had three of Eeva’s friends over to sing some backing vocals. The traditional Ilosaarirock weekend came, so I took my basses (trusty Musicman Stingray and the new guy, Hagström semi acoustic for that 70’s sound…) as we had agreed to record the basses at Teijo’s while I was there. We checked Michael Monroe, Mustach, Sigur Rós and Squarepusher among others and enjoyed the best finnish festival once again. The bass recording went smoothly, we split the songs evenly among the two of us using both basses as we deemed necessary. We also managed to squeeze in some keyboard work, Teijo once again delivered! I did have one real holiday week in there as well, we did a short tour of finnish west coast with the missus, fun!

August – Some real work, Franck and Brink, Tiger Angle recording & vocals. Some studio fixing at Musicworks. The FLipSide ep was a stone in my shoe, so I asked Samu to help me to finish it. We started with Diving Down…
I noticed that I had a load of unfinished material lying around and got an idea for an archival series that could be called “Samsara Recordings”. Some Chapter One, Kataya, Kudos and PS….I had already mixed the Kudos gig @ Rekolan Kino, so that seemed like a good first release. Antti was quite taken with the idea and especially Chapter One, so I took out Last Letter and we made a digi release of it.

September – Sel8nne premix at Juha Hakanen’s place and final mix at Kalevala. More FlipSide mixing with Samu, we were progressing quite steadily. As the older songs were finalized, new ones were made as well. As I made the vocals for SSTB, I also did some for FlipSide. It feels good to sing even though the result is not always what I imagined. I just need to work at it…
We mixed a sort of a scifi movie called Apeiron with Olli at Cinepost. Cinepost is a nice, small mix room at Finnvox where I’ve had the pleasure to mix some documentaries etc. Olli is a talented sound designer who is easy to work with and what’s most important, he’s into prog as well…;-). While we were mixing, Pauli mastered the Kudos’ Live at Rekolan Kino downstairs. We also agreed that Samsara would release the digi version of Olli’s Dim Cargo CD.

October – Teijo came once more, this time to nail the Alpha Indigo mixes. And we did, but I was sceptical (and right, as we’ll soon see). SSTB backing voxes and keyboards were also in order, we managed 8 out of 11. The ex-Havana Black drummer, Jussi Tegelmann came around and gave a nice presentation of his work as as audio post pro in USA. He’s done quite well. My first foreign film mix also happened as Arni Gustafsson, an Icelandic sound guy (we’ve crossed paths few times before) asked if I would mix a short road movie called Livingston. I did, it was nice although I didn’t understand a word…
The next week was a busy Brink week as I made (with some help from Anttoni) 4 different “things” for them. One of them was a SPEK fire hazard infomercial that I also mixed for theatres. Jani (Rämö) and Perttu came to do some recordings with their Grasshammer Deluxe -group, I promised to mix it. Pretty straightforward country/blues stuff, 2 acoustics, cajon and vocals. Kudos Live was released on the 25th. Samu’s wife Anu came and sang b vocs for 3 of the SSTB songs, I’m shooting for some Pink Floyd soul-ish vibe. I’ve asked Riikka (of Alpha Indigo) and Satu (who sang on the 3rd PS., “Oma Maailma”) also, so I’ll have a proper chorus ;-). Tiger Angle’s got released as well, we released them one by one, a week apart.

November – A trip to London was on the agenda as Ossi, my Avid dealer, got a chance to bring some of his customers to Pinewood to check the new Avid S6 controller. We went with Jykä. We visited Dolby, checked Atmos (were impressed), met with Jussi Honka who’s working there and saw S6, System 5 and one of the mixing stages at Pinewood (I was deeply impressed). Excellent trip!
Teijo came for the last time to really finalize the Alpha Indigo (and this time we did, mastered it as well). And as was fitting, we also managed to make the last of the SSTB b voxes and keys. I had over the months also sung all of the vocals (and done the solo’s and such) and while I thought they would be sung again later on, most turned quite nice already. Teijo gave some pointers for few of the songs needing resinging and I promised to deliver. I mastered one CD for my friend Pekka Nyman (“Sana Vain”) and made, once again some Brink ads and stuff. A documentary “Bensonhurst” came in (Jykä sound designing and recording) for post, that took a few weeks to make. Steven Wilson, Karnivool and Dweezil Zappa gave concerts.

December was a truly busy month – Quite a few Brink things, FlipSide ep finalized and mastered, Bensonhurst sound finalized, 3 of Franck Media’s long documentaries sound edited (with Santtu and Anttoni), “Huojuva Kuu” mixed at Cinepost and my dear friends Tuomas’ 50th birthday surprise party for which we practised two different sets of music: a medley of old prog stuff with Pale and Otto and some old TMB and PS. stuff with Esa, Repa, Pale and Otto. It was fun, although the sound at stage was not so great. Chapter One: One was mastered at Finnvox as well, Tomi made a really nice cover for it.

I probably forgot quite a lot already, but these at least were done last year…

Quite a year: lots of music, lots of work, lots of badminton. Fun!