Tag Archives: SSTB

Withering

The single from upcoming album “Little Things” is out. SpotifyApple Music.

Withering is, according to my focus group 😁, the most accessible of the 10 songs from the album. It’s also the only one where I had a writing partner, Jani Rämö. Jani kindly handed me a bunch of his lyrics quite a few years back and I’ve used them copiously all over my projects, namely Liquid Wolf‘s Second Wind parts 1 and 2 plus Flipside’s second ep Dead Light. The crew in the song is the same as most of the album: Sami Kuoppamäki on drums, me on lead vocals, guitars, bass and keys and Ella Eriksson (ellaella) and Valtteri Tuominen on backing vocals.

Summer is…

an active time, at least for me. I don’t have the nerve to just sit around for more than few days. So I’ve managed to finalise the SStB’s “Little Things”, it will be released late August. First serving will be single “Withering”, due 4th of August. Here’s the cover:

I’m mighty pleased with the album. It feels new and fresh compared to the earlier SStB releases, not to belittle them in any way. Aki Sihvonen, my co-producer lent an invaluable hand in weeding out the right material from my demos and giving sound advice when ever needed. More on this closer to the release, basic SStB info can of course be found here.

Lighthouse Sparrows new EP or some such is moving along nicely as well. We have 8 songs in pretty good shape. We’ve managed to hack the arrangements and most of melodies/lyrics into good shape and Miri has this time around played demo drums for most of the songs which of course helps a lot. During these last weeks we’ve gone thru the songs a second time and should be ready to start recording (as much as is needed) properly during July. We’re planning to release one EP of probably 4 songs late spring/early winter and either compose/arrange etc more songs for a full lenght album or keep releasing EP’s, we’ll see.

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!

Time…

feels liquid…Half of 2017 already passed. OK, I have been quite active so no problem there. By my calculation 24 new songs in progress as we speak: 10 Inertia, 9 SSTB and 5 Eeva.

Inertia, my real band 😉 with buddies Tomi Laaksonen, Janne Laine and Tipi Pulkkinen, has been busy recording all the new songs. We recorded the drums at our former practise room @ Katajanokka, additional recordings were made at home studios. I asked my pal Hannu Leiden to help me out, once again. We’ve basically mixed all the songs and are waiting for Tomi to produce the cover etc material.

Inertialaisii_JL Inertialaisii_TL Inertia

 

 

 

 

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SSTB ie. me and Teijo Tikkanen are in well into pre production of the second SSTB release. We whipped 9 of my songs into shape and boy are they varied: from the QOTSA influenced “Trials and Errors” via “Forever and a day” with it’s nod to Power Windows era Rush to NIN tinged “My Companion”.  Fun times are guaranteed when the two of us are working together! Early 2018 release…

Soul_brothers

 

 

 

 

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Eeva aka Tiger Angle. Five of Eeva’s songs, sung in finnish this time around. With a solid duo of Lassi and Mikko on drums and bass respectively, I had a field day producing and arranging (and playing guitar and keys) with the talented miss Eeva. Late 2017 release.

 

Other activities:

• Released the Liquid Wolf “Second Wind, part 2”
• Mixed the second season of “Black Widows” + a few other things @ Cinepost.
• Mixed documentaries @ Kalevala.

Onwards, the rest of 2017 looks to be a busy one, quite a few mixes already lined up!

Summer’s been cancelled

At least here in Finland. I think we’ve had like 3 days of proper summer…

Well, at least I have a good excuse to stay in the studio ;-). Studio work has actually been two fold: tearing down and building them anew + recording. I’ve made arrangements to move my two units to Kalevalastudio in Maunula, Helsinki where I do the bulk of my post work. We are renovating the upstairs and rebuilding the units with my stuff. As I’ve garnered quite a bit of gear, I still have my home turf next door, now it serves more as a sort of a music playground with Pro Tools HD-X of course for recording and mixing in one room and the second room reserved for the instruments and amps, drums taking up most of the space.

Liquid Wolf 2 has taken some leaps forward as Samu managed to play the first round of basses. I’ve done basically all of the guitars, some solos need work still tho.  Teijo has sung about half of the songs and played some keys as well. Especially the keys have made a huge difference! The songs are emerging slowly but surely. I’ve sent first demos to Kuoppis as well so we might be able to have the drums recorded during the fall as well…

I received the hard copies of SStB, people have seemed to like it, which is nice! Here’s the Spotify link: SStb – Blacks & Blues

Also the FlipSide ep#2, Dead Light, was digitally released a while back. We’re planning to raise the ruckus a bit later as everybody’s having their summer holidays, but it’s here if You’re interested: FlipSide – Dead Light

FS_DL_front SSTB_booklet_HR_front OntheMove

Into the groove

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:

sstb_b&b_front

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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…

August, work…

Yes, it’s been hot, but what the heck, it’s summer! The autumns work starts by recording some foleys with Kimmo Vänttinen for Lomasankarit. We also made plans with Samu to start going thru the Liquid Wolf -material for the second album. I have maybe an hours worth of demos which should yield maybe 20 minutes usable material. The SSTB album is making it’s second round of mixing/mastering, I checked the songs after the first round and found a few
😉 things to correct. Pauli said he would master it next week, Tomi made also some promises re: the cover for next week. The album will be called “Blacks & blues”. SSTB will be released ASAP, so I’d guess by the mid september…
Chapter One : Two seems to be delayed somewhat since we’re planning to record some new stuff for it and the guys aren’t the most dynamic…

Added some nice reviews of Liquid Wolf “First Light” to the LW section.

And yes, we’re slowly getting the FlipSide “ep#2” material into shape.

Have a good one!

Now playing: “For Nothing” (O.S.I)