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!
Lighthouse Sparrows ep “The Deep End” is ready and available from all major digital platforms. It’s 5 songs and 30 minutes of modern rock, maybe prog, maybe not 😉
All relevant data can be found here
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!
It’s been severely delayed but we’re still moving. As You may recall, the plan was to (re)do 4 of the old songs, Behind the gaze, Beyond the vision, Just another role and Wings of amor.
Well, we are – The original plan was just to do them as they were. It quickly became apparent that it was not such a good idea. Let sleeping dogs lie…,-).
The only plan that made real sense was to redo everything, starting from the arrangements. Sami did just that. The songs in effect became different songs. So the lyrics needed to be redone, not all together but some of the fiery youthfulness (i.e.. naiveté) needed to be weeded out. Sami and Hannu did that. As years had taken some toll of Hannu’s higher vocal register, the melodies needed to be adjusted. Hannu did that.
We’re now halfway there; Behind the gaze and Beyond the vision are done. So 2 more to go. Hopefully we get them done soon. As the songs progress, I wanted to change a few things still. The new songs will be under “Chapter Two” moniker ;-). And there will be some guests appearing who were not in the original line-up(s). The first one being Teijo Tikkanen, who will be playing piano on “Behind the gaze” at least. Some talk of female backing vocals has also been in the air.
So here we go!
Every chance I’ve had, I’ve (with the help of Samu) been recording rhythm guitars for the upcoming LW2….Here’s a quickie from the sessions:
After the first real summer holiday in 10 years, settling back into work routines wasn’t that easy. I decided to do “make work” first. So in the last week of my holiday, I sat down every morning and made a song. I managed to compose 6 songs in as many days. They should serve as a nice launch pad for the next SSTB project. Speaking of which: the “blacks & blues” is ready, I just need to make the ddp compilation and off it goes. Here’s the final front cover:
Once the groove was found, real work was in order: The mixing of “Requiem” with Ville Katajala and the recording and editing of “Lomasankarit” foleys with Kimmo Vänttinen. In betweens we managed to go through the demos for Liquid Wolf 2 with Samu, I also began to take them one step further by adding and refining. We should have the skeletons of songs in a few months…
The second Chapter One -release is approaching fast. This is a MkII release, so Pekka Viherlaakso and Jouni Ullakko appear only on few tracks, they were replaced by Mikko Terhiä and Jyrki Rahkonen respectively. The song list appears to be:
Chapter One
Wait
Masks
Waiting for a moon
Pictures
Sliding away
Another way
Just another role
Wings of amor
Beyond the vision
Behind the gaze
The last four were not properly recorded then, so we’ve made some plans to do them now. Nothing solid yet, but stay tuned…
This also means that the projected release date of mid August will need to be adjusted accordingly.
Wohoo! We went thru the songs with Samu W and made some tweaks. Maybe some really small adjustments could be made still, but basically it’s done. I’m happy!
