Welcome to the bottomless pit of information on the band Graceskull.

We are currently finishing recordings of our third album, due 2010. We've been working on this particular record for more or less 6 years now but worry not, it wil be worth the wait! Enjoy some news while waiting.

NEWS by ove
28.06.2010 Been working on a new song this weekend, a really mellow tune without a name (working title "TS Piano" - can't believe I've sunk this low, haha). It started as just a piano riff earlier last week but we had an idea (Julle and me, that is) to jazz it out and so I added some brush-stroke drums to it and also some jazzy organ stuff (I'm really proud of the solo I did) so it sounds quite promising. Should just figure out where the song goes from here...Anyway nice to be working on some new shit!

24.06.2010 A Hills session yesterday, it's probably been a good six months or more since the last time me and Coma got together with musicmaking in mind. I had already made some preparations the night before, I laid a beat for a song called "Step Back" which we continued on yesterday. The song is quite bare bones when it comes to the arrangement but we still managed to get a couple of interesting tracks in there, a "funky" bassline and some cello, not much else. I like this one a lot, it has a special feel to it. After the Hills session Julius came by and we saw through the running order of songs for the upcoming Graceskull album. I think we have a pretty darn good sequence now, I was fairly happy with the sequence I had before but Julle's points-of-view are always essential, it's very rare his gut feelings are wrong when it comes to these type of decisions. 10 tracks, 43 minutes, has no name and sounds fucking great. Oh yeah.

28.05.2010 Heading off to Helsinki tomorrow with Julius with intent to finalize the mixes for the upcoming Graceskull album. Hopefully we get a lot of work done, I'd be ecstatic if we'd happen to get it finally wrapped. Andy had popped in to Arttu's studio yesterday and re-recorded the bass track for "Hollywood" and that should be the final thing put on tape for this record. Should. Anyway, I'm excited as fuck!

26.05.2010 Okay, peeps, today is the day The Conquistadors fantastic second album "Citiscapes" is out and in stores. Go get your copy at Record Shop X or Stupido, better get a real old school CD because it seems that our distributor has fucked up with the digital copies and they're nowhere to be found from Itunes and whathaveyou.

30.04.2010 Okay, okay, okay. It's been a helluva long time since the last update and I'm here to tell you the silence stops now. I'm unsure why I've been shying away from journaling our recent activities but anyway here's a short recap of what's happened in the past few months. Graceskull's upcoming record is doing fine, Arttu is still doing mixes whenever he has the time and we're past the halfway mark on that road, I'm really hoping we get this album wrapped for an Autumn 2010 release. There, I said it. Meanwhile me and Julius have activated ourselves songwriting-wise and have been working steadily on new material which has come along very nicely. We have a good handful of songs that we're very happy with. Most of my time during the last week or so has been spent on things The Conquistadors related. We shot a video for the first single off the Citiscapes record four weeks back and "Kill The Light" as it is called can be seen at Youtube as we speak. Yeah, and we are promoting the single with a beautiful old school cassette, probably not making things easier for the radio stations but you know, it's fun. Some radio stations have already been playing the song nonetheless so I guess it's a good start. The album itself is coming out May 26th so stay tuned to that. The Conquistadors can also be found on Facebook now so if you're into all this socialist media type-of-thing, clicky here.

18.02.2010 At Jorma's place yesterday, sang some backing vocals to a Meadow Island track called "Wild One" (that's what I think at least). It went really smoothly and we got the tracks done really quickly. They have a nice bulk of songs in ready or almost ready condition so I guess you'd better start preparing yourself for an album by Meadow Island. It's gonna be awesome, trust me!

06.01.2010 About to embark on a three date tour with Atyd today; Tampere, Helsinki and Tallinn. It's gonna be exciting as I think we have our shit better together than ever before and it's also my first time in Tallinn. Check out Atyd's Myspace for further info!

01.01.2010 Happy New Year! This year starts off wonderfully in Graceskull land as we are glad to announce that mixing of our long awaited (I have waited long, that should suffice) third album has begun. Mr. Arttu Peljo sent the first mix (of the song "Stifle") during the Christmas holidays and we are expecting more in the next coming two or three months. Can't wait to hear what magic he conjures for these ditties, when Arttu is behind the mixing desk you can call him Goldfinger, understand me motherfucker?

07.12.2009 So Friday saw our first gig in quite a while...the outcome? Not really all that satisfied I must say. The evening itself was a blast, I enjoyed Bon Jouni's amazing guitar skills and lovely voice a lot and Meadow Island rocked (well, in a nice and calm way) and blew people away, even with Julius, me and Paati featured in their set closing number (Meadow Island had in-ear-monitors and we didn't which proved quite a challenge, we couldn't hear a note they were playing). But Graceskull, hmm, well I think we played okay and it sounded probably somewhat how we should sound like but The Feeling just wasn't there. Maybe I had built up too much of stress for one gig, maybe it was too long between gigs, maybe...whatever the reason we just played through the set pretty hastily and left the stage. To sum it up: we'll rock harder than your grandma (cause she sure rocked hard last nite!) next time, I promise. Thanks to everyone who came, you were many. Also thanks to Volume for getting the gig together and helping us with all the stuff our roadies should do.

04.12.2009 Tonight! Our first gig in years, really looking forward to it although I've been stressing over logistics and decorations a lot more than I've been worrying about playing. If it's a good sign or not, I don't know but I'm hoping it will all turn out for the best. Y'allz are most welcome!

30.11.2009 A great rehearsal on Saturday. It was really strange, usually the sound at our rehearsal space is terrible but somehow this time I could hear everything including myself (a first!) I really enjoyed the new song "People" despite it getting pretty AOR towards the end of the song, or at least that's what the boys thought. Some songs were cut from the set since we couldn't get them groovin' just right, surprisingly "The Light Is Changing" among them (a song that really grooves on the upcoming record, I tell ya). A good rehearsal often points to a shitty gig, let us hope that is not the case.

25.11.2009 Sang the lead vocal of "Hollywood" again last night, we deemed the original one too sloppy, it kinda brought the whole song down with it. Anyway the new vocal was much better, with better timing and pitch. We also delved into Julle's vault and listened to some reeeaaally old recordings we've made, some from the time Ilkka was still in band. It was actually useful as we did unearth two old songs that sounded quite promising, they just need some fresh arrangements (the best ones were "Locket" - which I've always considered a poor man's "Hollywood" - and "Promise"). We found a nice guitar feedback track on "Make Way" which I later at home added to the finale buildup of "Seasons", fits pretty darn good actually.

16.11.2009 I demoed "People" yesterday and had loads of fun doing it! To get a demo sounding this good feels great, Julius actually wasn't sure if we had recorded some of the stuff I laid down yesterday earlier so I guess I even imitated his style of playing pretty darn good. Yay! To backtrack a little, I also worked on preparing "Hollywood" for mixing on Friday but got stuck trying to get the bass track timed right. And eventually gave up on it, the groove is lost when you do too many fixes to the timing. I'm pretty sure Andy has to re-record it, I don't know yet if he's gonna do it with me and Julle or if Arttu wants to do it at his studio.

12.11.2009 Another rehearsal with the three of us. We concentrated more on the shortlist of songs we made the last time and I have to say that I was again surprised how well the songs worked despite having no bass player. I skipped the acoustic guitar complete for the rehearsal which must be a first but it felt good too, maybe due to the fact that I borrowed Coma's Thölix amp for the rehearsal and it's the best sounding amp I've ever played. I've hardly played any guitar in probably two years or so, so it's gonna take a while before I get more confidence in playing again, I hope the playing gets a bit better before the Loska gig in December. Anyway, I think we have a dozen or so songs now that we're gonna rehearse for Loska, surely that will do. Oh yeah, and Julius had some new machine that he had built in a 30 year old Tupperware box (or whatever) that he tried out, I guess it was a pre-amp and a tremolo for the Rhodes. He wasn't totally convinced by the sound since a lot of the chime of Rhodes sound was gone but I guess he will work on it some more and get it rocking just perfectly. What else? Well, before the rehearsal I edited and fiddled with "Kings & Queens" and got that sucker mix-ready too, oh the joy! And after the rehearsal I recorded a tiny, tiny bit for the intro to that song, it's a details that I had recorded myself a while back but now I had a guest vocalist to do it which was good since it's kind of a snippet of a discussion between two people. Yah yah, you'll hear it when the record drops...

11.11.2009 Working with the songs to get them to a mix-worthy shape yesterday. Well actually I've been doing quite a bit of that recently. Yesterday it was "Stifle" and "Remains of You" that got the "royal treatment", so all tracks are in separate files and all that good stuff. I guess you could say that I'm about halfway through the pile now, I'm hoping that I get all of the songs wrapped up next week.

10.11.2009 Gig ahoy! The legendary Loska is back bigger and better than ever. Exclamation mark. On December 4th we will hit the stage at Club 25 and also DJ the whole evening playing slow and beautiful stuff, Loska-style you know. The dresscode is black and I'm hoping to add some touches to the decoration of Club 25 for the event, we'll see what we can cough up for the occasion. But stop the press, for the first time is Loska's history we have other acts on the bill, first up it's Bon Jouni who will play some of his fantastic songs solo and then it's on to the debut gig from Meadow Island who I've mentioned here not too long ago, it's the new band with Sara's singer Jorma. So it's one helluva bill, I'd say. It's gonna be great and you know it.

03.11.2009 First rehearsal in a long, long time for Graceskull yesterday. It was just me, Julius and Paati but amazingly we got a whole lot of songs working with this three man lineup. We actually went through some 80 songs to get a feel which ones would still feel relevant and have a chance at getting a nice arrangement. We ended up with 20-25 songs which we're going to get to work with. It felt really good to play these songs again, I mean really, really good. It was actually strange how some of the more obscure songs (those that aren't on any of our records etc) came bursting out from some deep hole in the back of my brain, it odd how that works, how the songs are etched somewhere in you. Okay, getting poetic or something, gotta go.

26.10.2009 Listened to some old, old Graceskull demos on Saturday and got a rush of sorts to write some new stuff. Just to see if I still can write Graceskull stuff, you know, or something like that. So there was this one song that came about that I don't have a name for yet which also sounded quite good the following day and that's always a good sign. So anyway, I think I still have it, even though I'll be the first one to admit I need some flexing of the songwriting muscles when it comes to Graceskull stuff. But it felt good and I got really anxious about doing new stuff too. Now if I could just get this record off my back, we could get into doing some new shit again...

19.10.2009 The Hills (of Vaasa) were back in action on Saturday, me and Coma sat at my place and recorded a demo of sorts of this song that's called "I Don't Know Where I'm Going". I really love this song and I think we got a bunch of good ideas together even though I think Coma thought the arrangement might be too mainstream or something. Later on in the evening I reconvened with Coma and the boys from Sugarrush as I crashed in on their rehearsal. We played some Sugarrush songs together but also tried out a new rockier version of Graceskull's "Lover" (which was quite promising actually) and then…well, I'm not exactly sure where the idea came from but we played just C and G chords and sang first a potpourri of Beatles choruses on top of those, then Michael Jackson, then U2 and then Madonna. Amazing that none of the songs actually had that chord progression! Fun as it was I don't think anyone else would've appreciated it much, it must've sounded like a tone-deaf retard tribute band of sorts.

12.10.2009 Spent the better part of last week abroad. Musical highlights of the trip were seemingly worlds apart but actually not that far if you come to think of the wide-eyed nature of both acts. First off I went to see "We Will Rock You" which is of course a musical based on the songs of Queen. It's been running for eight years in London's Dominion Theatre and judging by the reaction of the crowd, it will run for a good few more. Joyous would be one word to sum it up, it was built for a good time. If you've never realized how good the better Queen songs are, I suggest you try them out in this format, you get a ridiculous plot and some good laughs to boot. Then on to Brussels where I caught Patrick Wolf live on stage at the Botanique. I've been a big fan of the man for a couple of years now and it was great to finally see him in action. First off, the venue was super nice, built inside the botanic gardens that have apparently been relocated elsewhere. Patrick was super nice too but only after he'd had a chug of toga midway through the set. The first half of the gig I admit I was at unease because he seemed to be in a not-too-good mood and didn't really talk to the audience at all, during "Battle" he almost seemed to get aggressive towards the crowd, I dunno. But anyway when he returned on stage after the costume change it was a totally different thing, he explained that it was the tour's final gig due to which he was unable to play the ukulele songs off "Wind In The Wires", apparently a ukulele last only so long whilst on tour. Anyway he was really funny and warm and just as great and artsy crazy as I had hoped he'd be. So a great gig in all, even despite Patrick's terrible guitar sound (he had some awful Flying V which was off tune all the time and I think it was rigged straight to the mixing desk via a cheapo pedal, at least that's how it sounded). Patrick is in Helsinki later on this month so check the guy out, won't ya?