News entries for the year 2006

27.12.2006 Despite the yuletime I've been hard at work getting some words down on paper for the new Conquistadors songs. I think I have two of them now just about ready and done, the newest tune should be called "Killed the Light" (or "Kill the Light" or whatever...) and the slowest of the trio of new tunes is now called "The Disappearing". Oh yeah, and something I forgot in my last post before Christmas was that the future Con album also has a working title as of last Friday, it's called "Citiscapes". It feels like a pretty good frame for an album, I think I have a decent idea on what the disc is going to be about and the idea is even stronger now that I have the texts done for those songs. Yeah, I know the previous one isn't even out yet but it's just a fact that creating and conceiving concepts for new shit is what I'm always the most enthusiastic about. Sorry, dudes and dudettes.

23.12.2006 A little rehearsing and a little studiowork yesterday with The Conquistadors. We tried out the rehearsing setup Mikko had built earlier on at the Petting Room studios. The sound was much better than our normal rehearsal space which proved a bit tricky for me since I'm really not used to hearing my singing all that well. But I'm sure I'll get used to it, har har. After going through our set (with Paati doing some backing vocals since he didn't have his gear with him) we proceeded to work on the tune that appeared out of nowhere the previous time we were at the studio. It has since then received a name that is "Killed The Light" and after yesterday's work, it's pretty much a done song. We added a bassline to it, edited some drums and wrote the vocal for the verse and did a whole lot of other recording which perked it up and brought it a more human feel than it had had before. With all that usual reporting now done, the Graceskull clan would like to wish you all a Merry X-mas - luv'n'kisses!

15.12.2006 We rehearsed a live set with The Conquistadors for the first time yesterday. It actually went better than I would've thought, sure there were a couple tunes which really didn't roll right just yet but the majority of the songs found their live form quite easily. We've brought in Frankie Magnum to spread some guitar magic over the songs (and actually some bass too) which brought more of that live feel to the music. I was surprised how difficult some of the songs were to sing, I'd kinda forgotten about that. A lot of them have way higher stuff than I'm used to with Graceskull etc. but I guess it will all fall into place when we get some more practise.

07.12.2006 Over at Petting Room studios with Mikko - and later on also Paati. We got the rest of the tracks sorted for our liveset so we can finally start rehearsing for gigs. Also got a new version (we're using this for the live set as well) of "I Alone" done, it came out pretty fucking good, it grooves much meatier than the original one and is also a bit faster. When we were just about done a sudden surge of inspiration struck me and like many a time before we ended up brainstorming over this new song into the wee hours. We got the basic parts done (the chords and whatev) and also a pretty good melody for the bridge and chorus. Hopefully we'll continue working on this one pretty soon, it's a bit harder than any track we've done before - maybe something in between "Something Good" and "Daydreamer" but with more balls. Innaresting. Oh yeah, and on the subject of "Daydreamer", the video we shot a week or so back is all done now and you can peep it over at Youtube. Enjoy!

04.12.2006 I must admit I didn't expect all that much from our gig at Sky. So it is now nice to announce that it went just fantastic. That's at least how I felt after the gig and judging from the reactions ofthe crowd they'd agree to at least some degree. At first things weren't looking too promising since the the bar was full of pikkujoulu-jerks (ask for your nearest Finn for a deeper explanation of this term) and the flu I'd had all week felt like it was gonna snatch my voice at any given moment. But as soon as we got the show rolling the people started to listen more closely note after note and my voice held out pretty damn good - probably one of the best singing performances I've pulled on a gig. A thank you is in order to the people who made it there at that late hour, you were indeed a great audience (so great that we had to pull "Building Blocks" our of our collective ass for the encore even though we hadn't rehearsed it). Before the gig me and Julius were at Club 25 and checked our a handful of bands who had a kind of a battle of the bands going. Four best contenders were picked to represent Vaasa as our city is Popcity 2007. It was nice to see some bands which I've never seen before, I guess I've managed to fall out of the band circuit in Vaasa or something (seven out of eight bands I'd never seen live and four I'd never heard of). Congrats to the bands who made it, make Vaasa proud!

30.11.2006 A rehearsal yesterday with the three (me, Julius and Andy J.) of us. Went alright except for a song or two which we cut out off the set, I guess at least "Found My Place" wasn't really rolling with the arrangement we had for the trio format. The most remarkable thing that night was however when I was driving home pretty late when I heard a tune in the radio which just blew my mind. I didn't manage to catch the performer though but with a little help from our friends at Google I found out that the tune was "Wichita Lineman" by Glen Campbell. I have now been playing on repeat a performance of the song from the seventies which I found at Youtube, I suggest you do that too, amazing stuff. Here's the link!

27.11.2006 A video shoot yesterday with The Conquistadors. The day sure had its fair share of unfortunate incidents but we came on top in the end as the footage looked pretty much exactly as we'd planned it. I'd been worried that I would look like a complete jackass on tape since I really haven't done any frontman duties before but I think I did surprisingly well and Mikko will surely make my appearance seem even better when he will cut the video. An early version might be readied as soon as next week since we're aiming on getting the video onto a promo DVD that the Finnish Music Industry types are aiming to use at MIDEM next year (and I guess the deadline for the discs production was next week or something). Anyway we sure hope to get the video out there as soon as possible for all y'all to see. Backtracking to Saturday then, we had a Graceskull rehearsal too - well, actually we just went through a list of songs to figure out what we're gonna play next Friday at Sky. It's gonna be me and Julius with Andy J. behind the bass so a pretty mellow set should be expected.

22.11.2006 Some Conquistadors related work yesterday, me and Miko went through the tracks of a handful of songs to get some sense into how we're gonna do them live. We also started work on a new version of "I Alone", a faster and more concise one at that. Maybe a future single, who knows. We only got the basics done, we'd need a whole day (and Paati on the premises) to get that shit done right.

20.11.2006 A Band Jam took place on Saturday and as always, fun was had a plenty. This year our particular clique had coughed up a performance that probably not that many were expecting: we played a set of J. Karjalainen's best known songs dressed up as cowboys. Yeah, if you weren't there it's a bit hard to explain it further than that and I guess even if you were there, some unanswered questions surely remain. I think we played pretty good considering that we only had rehearsed twice and never as a the whole nine piece we appeared on stage (I think there were five of us at the rehearsals at best). Oh yeah, one more thing: whoever stole my Hevoshullu magazine, please return it immediately, it had a killer center spread!

15.11.2006 A lil rehearsal yesterday with the guys, it's for this Band Jam thingy that's gonna happen on Saturday in Amarillo, Vaasa. It was nice to play with the guys and I enjoyed greatly exchanging borderline stupid/genius vocal harmonies with Frankie Magnum, loads of laughs even if Andy J. semiquietly disapproved some of our shit. We got all of the three (or four...or five...depends how you count 'em) songs working which was a bit unexpected but we're supposed to rehearse one more time on Friday. I'm not really sure if we should be working on this material but...well, it might turn out fun, sure hope so.

08.11.2006 Over to Petting Room studios yesterday, I sang new vocal tracks for a Conquistadors remix that Firevision boys had done. Of "Daydreamer" of course. The bad thing was however that my flu got the best of me (or my voice) after three or four takes but I guess that we got the needed stuff together (we also added some minor arrangement ideas that I'd had in mind). Arttu should be mixing the stuff maybe next week, should sound sweet, the chorus is reeeeally assmoving.

06.11.2006 We're now another Loska older. It was actually our fifth one, how fast the time has passed. Anyway, a very pleasant evening with our live gig being the personal highlight (it was also nice to see a good number of new faces in the crowd, a new Loska generetion, hardyhar). This marked the first occasion of me picking up the electric guitar on a Graceskull gig and I think it went very well. This was actually due to me snapping a string on my acoustic during our rehersals on Saturday which forced me to try out the tunes with an electric axe because there were many lying around our rehearsal space (and I had run out of spare acoustic strings...okay, I extremely rarely even have spare ones). Upon our soundcheck then on Sunday it really started to sound quite good when I'd borrowed Andy J.'s amp and Frankie Magnum's Fender Tele and in the end I played the majority of the set with the electric guitar. Julius had brought with him his fine suitcase harmonium which gathered a lot of puzzled looks but I really love the sound of this instrument - and I'm certain it will make its comeback to our recordings again too (it was suspiciously gone on "Happiness"). We did quite many odd tunes (like "Wither" and "A Day Away" of which neither has been played live before) but I guess we did alright, at least that's how I felt. But we didn't just play old stuff but in contrast to "You Could Be The One" (which was about the first song we've recorded but never played live before either) we also played "People" which is just under a week old song. So those who attended got a eleven song wide spectrum on the band. Here's the setlist and here is the DJ setlist (which actually a few people were asking for). We'll see you again next year!

03.11.2006 Been writing the lyrics to the new song "People", I have a couple of verses down and the chorus too but I think some more writing would not hurt.

31.10.2006 Rehearsing is not always fun, you know. But yesterday's Graceskull rehearsal was as much fun as it was a tedious chore. Trying to get the songs we've never played before to work with just the two of us felt less than wonderful for some reason, even if we got a fair few of them to work quite nicely actually. But the fun part came when for some odd reason we jammed out a threesome of new songs/song ideas. One of them was clearly an intro of sorts to future Graceskull gigs, really powerful yet simple riff from Julius on the Rhodes. The second one (actually jammed on first before we even had tried out the oldies) was maybe a bit more of a rocking number, might be up to the final arrangement how it turns out. But the last one - I'm extremely hyped up about this one, at current it feels like it's one of the best things weve ever done. A slow and simple tune but I'd say a pretty strong melody and we already have a ton of details to brighten up this diamond. I'm calling it "People" for now, it also might be called "And The World Turns" since I wrote some lyrics to it earlier today. I'm feeling shit anxious to get properly working on this tune.

27.10.2006 Gig announcement! A wintery Graceskull set will be taking place at Vaasa's Sky Bar on the very first day of December.

26.10.2006 A lil trip to Helsinki yesterday with Mikko & Paati, we had a meeting with the record company guys (Elements & Kinkt) about the future of The Conquistadors. Lots of ideas were unearthed and and some blueprints for future actions were made and it seems like we're going to have a busy six months ahead of us, hopefully it will be as much fun as it will be busy.

23.10.2006 Loska 5. And you what's going down.

19.10.2006 Back in the saddle. Kinda. Yesterday we rehearsed, me and Julius, for the upcoming Loska thingy. We try to build the set around some songs that have never been performed or otherwise worked on. We went through a whole heap of songs (I guess about 30 in total) to see which ones we could make work and of course the vast majority of them proved to be such crap that there was no sense in revisiting them but a good few were surprisingly good too. Sometimes a healthy distance can help find something in a song that you couldn't have seen when it was written, a good example could be "Going Down" which sounded hella good yesterday. There's still some uncertainties on which instruments Julius is going to play but I believe his at least taking out his suitcase organ with him on this gig!

13.10.2006 Trying to get lyrics done to The Conquistadors' "Hands". Yesterday I got two verses done and then some but lying sleepless in my bed later on in the night I began to reconsider and got a new perspective on the subject. I think I have to redo basically all the lyrics but it's better to have a set of lyrics you're content with than just a bunch of lines thinly connected to each other. I like to sing something that has a meaning to me, it helps me remember the lines better too - I'm just built like that, ya know.

12.10.2006 We had a little sit down with The Conquistadors and made a whole lot of decision concerning singles, videos, live setup and whatnot. Naturally we couldn't keep our hands off the music and thus semi-accidentally made a new song. Well, actually it's not completely new as we dug up this one backtrack to a ditty that me and Mikko had made for another project but since it was kinda rejected or whatever, we decided to keep this one ourselves since it was a rockin' tune. We decided to find vocal melodies for the song later but before we knew it I was already singing some gibberish on tape. So the lyrics (and some finer details) are still missing but it's sounding just great already if you ask me. I believe it's called "Hands".

10.10.2006 Sorry for the downtime but we've really kept busy doing things that have absolutely nothing to do with music. Apart from some minor planning of this year's Loska which we've now secured a date for also - Sunday November 5th. Update yr calendar, will ya please. Not familiar with Loska? Well it's this evening of soothing, slow music at Vaasa's DOM where we get to play some tunes and also deejay the best music ever. So do not miss out, chief.

21.09.2006 While I was vacationing in Paris Julius had been hard at work building up the studio. With some help from Jens (with whom he played in the Depeche Mode covers project thingy) he'd set up sound proofing panels in the ceiling which should help against echoing and shit. In the coming weeks the floor should also be finished along with the paint job for the whole room. So hopefully it won't be too long until we can start on the next phase of recording our next album. Now if only I could come up with a proper title...

11.09.2006 Some Conquistadors news for a change. We got ourselves a new record company who's going to be releasing the album "Mil Mascaras"! The new co. is called Elements Music and from what we've heard they're pretty darn good at what they do so we're amped on getting them aboard. This doesn't however mean that we'd been dropped by Kinkt or the other way around but instead the two companies are releasing it together which should be a positive thing too as there's more people working the album then. I think the release should be happening sometime early 2007 but don't shoot me if it's not. Having cleared the future of "Mil Mascaras" we finally can now (after a hiatus of no less than two years) set our eyes on recording some more stuff with The Conquistadors. We actually did more than set our eyes on it, instead we started to record the next album last Saturday. We sat down and proceeded with the usual dogma of one song per day and about six hours later we had a new song pretty much in the bag. Sadly Paati was unavailable to attend the session due to a Sugarrush rehearsal so we're gonna return to this song later on and wax it really good with all the three of us present. It was nice to do The Conquistadors thing again, strange that the song sounded just like The Conquistadors again despite the 24 month pause in between doing stuff. I guess it's just how that bird sings.

05.09.2006 Yesterday we tested out the new studio setup we have, but it was set up in Julius library room instead of the real Killing Music studio which will be built a floor down from this particular library room. We started with trying out the new recordings from Helsinki and they sounded fantastic played through the new desk, warm and fuzzy but sharp and big at the same time. Surely it's not only the fault of the console but also Arttu's spectacular work but it was nice to see that the desk really works like it should. We proceeded to play some of the older stuff circa "First Time Again" and whatevz which also got a fair sound boost from the desk (most of the songs actually didn't sound that shit either, which was a bit surprising). Also I got a pair of headphones in the mail yesterday which I tested out briefly and they sounded good from what I could tell, I guess you can't really go wrong with Sennheiser. In the same parcel there was a Digidesign Mbox 2 which I'm planning on using at home to get some work (programming and ideas mainly I think) done on the new songs. Hopefully I get to test drive that device later on this week.

22.08.2006 We made an investment yesterday, we bought this vintage mixing desk off Ben Antell who's this interesting character that creates original visual and aural art in the middle of nowhere somewhere in the middle of Swedish speaking Ostrobothnia. I hope that sounds very mysterious, harhar. Well anyway the desk looks very nice and that's what counts. It's an Allen&Heath System 8 (possibly Mark II or some obscure version between Mark II and III) mixer with 24 channels and dates back to the 80's I think. This is the magic tool that we're gonna probably use to put together the remainder of the new album's tracks, hopefully it'll get us where we want to go. We also discussed the title of the album yesterday but while good suggestions were made (thanks Jonna!) the title still has not really materialized. I know what I would like it to say since I have a pretty good idea on what the album's about so I guess we'll just wait for the title to come to us from the clear blue sky. Or something.

14.08.2006 What's with the silenzio at the news dept., you may wonder? Well, I'm here to fix just that. Julius has been neck deep in recording all kinds of keyboard stuff for the future Jack Dalton Orchestra record, he even had a try at playing the Vibraphone which he reported was just amazingly sweet. I believe he's continuing work with the record in the weeks to come and also some work on the future Killing Music studios which will hopefully be operatable later on this year. We are planning to do the organ bits to the Graceskull record there in September, at least that's the plan for now. Meanwhile Arttu's been hard at work preparing and cutting and pasting and polishing the tracks we recorded at Soundtrack studios a while back and I actually got the finished product in my mail today. I haven't had time to check them out just yet but I trust Arttu's done his magic as usual and the shit's just golden. Hopefullu J.Lo has time to throw the files onto his computer sometime soon so we'd get the complete picture. This past Saturday however, it was time for some great time off as we made our way to Tavastia to catch the world's number one band live, that's The Twilight Singers we're talking about of course. Okay, I'm a huge Greg Dulli fan but I can't believe there was anyone at the club who didn't think this was a super duper gig. They played super tight as always and Greg of course nearly blinded us with his charisma - not to mention drummer Bobby who I consider one of the best live drummers I've ever seen, the guy's Animal from the Muppets and a magician rolled into one. Or something, you gotta just see him do his magic. They'd brought Mark Lanegan also along for the ride but surprisingly the less said about his performance the better - I just think the show would've been at least as good without his as it was with him (Lanegan and Dulli's duet version of Massive Attack's "Live With Me" however was pretty darn good). The best eight or so minutes of the gig was spent however when they pulled out "Papillon" and Greg inserted Afghan Whigs classic "Crime Scene Part One" lyrics into the song's jam part. I must admit I was teary eyed at this point, "Black Love" is just my favourite ever, it means the world to me, and the way that song opens the whole album - it's just phenomenal. It was suprising for me how amped the Finnish crowd seemed to be about the gig, I never knew we were so many that loved the work of the man Dulli. But it was great to see the band feed on the energy the crowd gave and by the end of the gig Greg was seemingly moved (as moved as I was sweaty). Just a fantastic show and a fantastic evening, it's great to see a liveshow that's not based on gimmick(s) but just good music played beautifully by talented people. "Bathe my path in shining light" again anytime, Twilight Singers.

04.08.2006 Julius has been studiobound again, he's been recording his parts to the future record by Jack Dalton Orchestra (still not feeling that name, sorry). Yesterday he reported that a couple of tracks had already been about done, they're recording a bulk of it live I guess. He had had some difficulties getting the Leslie to work right because it was located in another room but thanks to his electricianship they'd finally gotten it working. More on these recording probably later on, they should be recording this week and the next from what I can remember.

31.07.2006 In Rovaniemi on Saturday, I had Sugarrush axing duties. We played at this festival called Down By The Kemijoki along with Cartoon Tree, Scandinavian Music Group and Egotrippi among others. After a quick soundcheck and some relaxing at the hotel we headed to the venue to check out Cartoon Tree who played the best gig I've ever seen from them. I also have to mention the beautiful 70's Ibanez 335 copy guitar which their axeman was yielding, superfine specimen - the finish was just amazing! So if anybody has a spare one just like that (he was not interested in selling it, I did ask) please call. Anyway we were the final band playing at the festival and our timeslot was supposed to be 1.45 AM but since some bands had streched their set a bit longer than expected we actually started playing at 2.40 AM or something like that. Needless to say one often isn't quite top form at that time of the day but I thought we did just fine. I played as messy as I always do with the 'Rush but it was a fun gig to play since we'd thought that the audience would've been to tired for rocking that late in the day but luckily were wrong. There's probably something that's different with the poeple who live that far up north, their sun was shining still after our gig so maybe it's that it's never particularly dark in the summertime. Many thanks to the extremely nice personnel at the festival, there are tons of venues who'd need advice from you on how they should treat the bands. Rock on.

26.07.2006 And here are the photos I promised. Enjoi!

25.07.2006 Alright, alright! I'm finally back online and got nothing but good stuff to tell ya. The studio weekend couldn't have gone any better. We (that's me, Paati, Andy J. and the driver FLB) arrived late on Friday July 14th to Soundtrack Studios in Helsinki where Julius and Arttu were already waiting for us. They'd been pillaging through the microphones and stuff and basically had all the essential stuff laid out and ready use. So we set up the drumset and watched Arttu work his magic ie. place funny looking mikes all over the room. The great thing about Soundtrack Studios is that the big room has amazing acoustics and that's why Arttu wanted to record the room too and not just the thud on a drum head. They'd also set up individual rooms for me and Julius so we could all play with Paati (Andy was playing in the same big room as him) while recording. This proved to be a super idea even though I had had my doubts about it working, it did good to the flow and feel of the songs and I think we all had a better time playing than we would've had if we'd only sat in the control room the whole time listening to the drums and the click track. That late on Friday night the flow wasn't quite apparent though because the trial run of "Kings and Queens" we did was just horrible, we were all over the click track. Next morning after "a good night's sleep" something had changed however and come sundown on Saturday we had recorded all the drums for the record! And it wasn't just drums either because since we'd played along with Paati we also had bass and Rhodes tracks which were usable (or about 90 per cent of them). I think all of us including Arttu were amazed that we'd managed to pull this off, it's not like were professional musicians or anything, you know. Anyway we had booked both Saturday and Sunday at the studio so proceeded on Sunday with choosing the right takes for each song (which was easy since we didn't have that many takes to begin with!) and polishing some minor flaws after which we proceeded to record some grand piano for a couple of tracks ("Remains of You", "The Light Is Changing", "Nightmares (Here Right Now)" and "Found My Place"). Julius did some fine work but unfortunately we had a lil' mishap and the click track found its way onto some of the piano tracks too and at least the stuff on "Found My Place" was unusable and we have to do it again someplace else now. All in all we're all feeling super good about the session and about the album too, Arttu really provided a great atmosphere to work in, relaxed but pro! Next up we're probably recording the keys some more, organ stuff probably and then it's time for some guitars - don't know when just yet but hopefully soon! Then onto last weekend when The Bullets got their asses on stage once again after a few months' "rest". The gig was at SÖU Rock festival in a tiny village called Molpe (I had no idea where it actually was until we'd arrived on the parking lot of the venue). I had a fun time on stage but I guess it was harder for the other guys, sure enough we were not playing nearly as tight as we had at the rehearsal just a few days earlier. After the gig me and Frankie gave an interview to Radio X3M which was a bit off the wall, maybe some of you caught it on the airwaves? Anywhoo, I hope I have some photos from the studio later on in the week...

13.07.2006 Sorry for the drought in the news but I've been without a network connection for a good while now due to the relocating of Nature Sucks Anyway offices. Hopefully the good ol' boys of Elisa get their shit together and provide us with access to the net next week...or else. Anyway, what's happened after the last time y'all heard from Graceskull? Well first I recorded some demos for the upcoming drum recording sessions. Then we rehearsed some. Then Julius attended the first rehearsal session for his new project (called Jack Dalton Orchestra...for whatever reason) which went great according to the man himself (Julius of course and not the MacGyver sidekick). Then The Toilets played a gig at Superstereo (inside ad outside actually) which lasted over seven hours - no, I'm not kidding, I'm still aching from the experience. Then Graceskull rehearsed some more and tomorrow we're heading to Helsinki to record the drum tracks for hopefully 12 songs with Arttu Peljo from Firevision. If feels exciting and great, Paati has tuned up his drums and we've lent some gear so we're ready to go. Wish us luck, two days ain't a long time if you have 12 tracks to do.

30.06.2006 Recorded some music to the click tracks yesterday, I maybe got half of the songs done. This should help Paati when he's rehearsing on his own, I just hope my first take stuff is good enough so that it does the complete opposite. I plan to do the rest of the heap later today.

29.06.2006 Living with the cowbell. It almost feels like we should have cowbell in every song all the time now - yeah, we've been rehearsing with the click track again. We finally pretty much worked out "Bring Me Love" which has been giving us a hard time with all its tempo changes and shit. At least the tempos (there's at least three or four of them in that song) should be alright now, there's still debate on how the drumtrack is gonna be in the second verse. But other than that we've got the songs pretty much worked out, we played the majority of them yesterday and the only one in the bunch that still needs some figuring out etc. (apart from "Bring me Love") is "Hush". Actually the first time we played "Found My Place" yesterday, I had goose-bumps and I think alone should say that the song finally works - and works good!

22.06.2006 Hard work, mah peoples! We were at it again yesterday at the rehearsal space and tried to get some sense into "Found My Place" and "Bring Me Love". I think we now finally have a version of "Found My Place" that works and works just damn fine too, hopefully it's as good on the record as it was yesterday at the rehearsal space. "Bring Me Love" was a bit more difficult to get together though, the shifting tempo (the choruses are faster) made it difficult to keep up with the click track and we also had some trouble finding the right drum arrangement for the second verse. I think there's still more work to be done at least on the second verse (Julius just phoned me and had some ideas) but at least it sounds like a song now. I think we should have this one ready too next time we have time to rehearse - right now it's time for a barbeque though (and maybe some street golf, we're kickstarting the 2006 season on Saturday if the weather's right!)

19.06.2006 I finally managed to make a sequenced master of The Royal Piss EP on Saturday. This means that it should be pressed in the coming weeks and available in July. So for that hot, hot summer feeling, choose 'Piss!

16.06.2006 An interesting session yesterday, we spent the evening seeking the right tempo for the songs that are to appear on the forthcoming album. I was mentally prepared for hellish work so it came as a surprise that we found the right rhythm pretty fucking easily and we all clearly agreed when something wasn't quite right. It's a strange thing how much one BPM can change a song. Paati and Andy did a wonderful job and we walked away from the rehearsal space with just two or three songs shy of the whole bunch being ready to go. Grrreat!

14.06.2006 Some more work with "All This I've Done For You" yesterday. It's basically all done now lyricwise if I don't come up with a breakdown section with some lyrics (which I feel the song might need) so you can peep the text here. You may wonder how a text as short as that can take me several days/weeks to get finished, sometimes I wonder that too. It's just that i sometimes get caught up with the words themselves, I try to get the point across the best I can without compromising what actually sounds good and fits well with the melody.

13.06.2006 Been working a bit with the lyrics again. I now have a pretty good version of "Remains Of You" ready (even though I'm not happy with some of the word choices there...and I'm not even sure of that title anymore) which you can see here and I've also got some more stuff added to "All This I've Done for You" (but this one's still missing one bridge lyricwise and maybe we need even a breakdown section with some words before it's done).

08.06.2006 Worked on some lyrics for a change yesterday. I made it about halfway through "All This I've Done For You" (which was probably had a working title of "Offering"), it came out alright I think. I'd like to think the lyrics include a slightly different approach to some familiar subject matters even though the stylistic approach is somewhat related to "Kings & Queens". It felt good that even though I haven't written stuff in ages, it wasn't painfully difficult to get stuff out and the stuff that ca,e out wasn't total garbage. Hopefully I have the time to finish this one pretty soon. "Beacon" is also waiting for some words to accompany the verse melody - wouldn't mind getting a chorus going either, I tried something out yesterday but it just didn't click.

06.06.2006 A rehearsal type of thingy yesterday. We originally meant to go through some songs and pick BPM's and stuff, just me, Julius and Paati but since our future drum production man Arttu was in town and wanted to hear the new songs we made it into a band rehearsal instead (Jocke was unable to attend though). I was quite sure that we weren't in our finest form since we hadn't rehearsed in a while but I guess we did alright despite. Surely there were some stuff that was a bit difficult to remember but all in all the songs seemed to work okay and we even worked on some songs that didn't have the band arrangement made yet. I had been a bit nervous whether we'd get "Bring Me Love" working or not but we got at least the chorus rolling pretty much like it should so it shouldn't be that problematic. We should only find a suitable key for the song, I'd like to sing the chorus an octave higher than I've had before but the current key is just a bit too high. Also the fast version of "Found My Place" was scrapped because, frankly, the boys hated it - you bastards! Anyway, I think we're going to upgrade the version we currently have and have it grow a bit more towards the end or something, maybe even incrase the tempo, I dunno just yet. We probably need to rehearse both these songs with the full band some more so we get to the definite versions. It felt good to get the process on the way though, the recording sessions are almost looming above us already!

03.06.2006 Sorry about the delay in updates, I've been way too busy and tired after the trip to UK to find my way on the keyboard. Let's just start off by saying that the trek was fun, as if you wouldn't have guessed it. Liverpool was a very pleasant city, I found it more accessible and friendly than London which is just too big for a small town boy such as myself. The Cavern was of course a cool place to play a gig at with all its history and stuff (The Beatles yada yada yada) - but mostly I was impressed by the stage's all lit backdrop which kept changing color, just great! We started our journey from London however where we checked out a Josh Rouse show at Shepherd's Bush Empire on Thursday night - again, what a beautiful venue! And the sound was equally super, as was the audience - a full house of them, they seemed to be tremendously hyped to see this man perform and seemed to know just about every song, crazy. Sadly he didn't move me practically at all, I thought it was all just too nicey nicey stuff - granted I probably had heard about one or two songs by the man before the gig so maybe we should blame it on not being familiar with his stuff. Fortunately the two warm up acts he had made good for his shortcomings, first up on the stage was a lone Luke Doucet hammering on his (amazingly beautiful) White Falcon and singing songs about breakups and drinking (and doing heroin). He was very skilled guitar player and the songs weren't that bad either, I (and rest of the Sugarrush troops) enjoyed his show quite a lot. In my mind the following band Strays Don't Sleep was even better, I couldn't help but make parallels to Graceskull - their songs started small and grew quite similarly as the basic blueprint of a classic GS song. Also these guys had a (I'm running out of superlatives here) super sound and basically their only downfall was that one of the main vocalists (the one with the acoustic guitar) seemed to be too much up in his own ass, boring politics in the between-song-banter and overall boringness - just sing the fucking song, dude. Please. Okay, enough with the reviews. Friday saw us driving up north to Liverpool and I know I'm not alone when I thought that maybe the best moment of the whole trip occured in the car. There just was a magic feeling when we hit the freeway and the sun was going down with the new Twilight Singers record was playing in the car - somehow everything was alright in the world at that particular moment. I'm sure I'm sounding like an art-fag right now but I just wanted to share that with you, sometimes the greatest moments are not the ones you've had the most expectations for, sometimes they just happen. After sleeping "a good night's rest" at a Liverpool hostel that reeked of mold we were due to appear at a club named The Attic at Accrington which was located not-too-far from Liverpool. The bar was small but I thought the show was great and the people were really nice. There were some 8 bands on the bill that night, some from Chicago, some from Israel, some from Sweden but we all got along just great. Next off was the main gig of the tour, a Sunday night slot at The Cavern club (Monday was a holiday in the englishmen's calendar so it was basically a second Saturday). Naturally halfway through the second song of the set I snapped a string on my axe and Frankie hopped in to fill in for me. I had Egotrippi's guitar tech Harri Huuhtanen (he plays the guitar in Ben's Diapers who had appeared on the stage right before us) change the string for me which took something like three songs, I believe alcohol had something to do with the lengthy process. Nevermind I hopped back on the stage with the cord in my back pcoket (there was only two guitar amps there) and rocked the final song of the set with the boys. Fun it was nonetheless. On Monday we had the final show of the tour when we played at about 5PM at the Cavern Pub (across the street from the Cavern club). It was strange to see the bar that packed even though it was 5 o'clock on a Monday but I guess the pub culture is just significantly different in the UK. I rocked hard (and my string snapped in the first song, what's with my axe?!?) and apparently so hard that the elderly that attended were not feeling it (some old lady had shared her insights with Frankie, she thought that I should be ousted since I disturbed the others' playing...or something like that). Once again, I had fun...and isn't that what really counts? The Cavern pub had all these great signatured guitars in display cases, Jon Bon Jovi's guitar was there, John Lennon's guitar was there...so I had to leave my mark too. I'm quite sure they wouldn't have accepted my crappy guitar though, so I left behind my broken plectrum - anyone who finds it, send me a picture and I shall reward you! It's pretty well hidden but it good to know I'm a part of the Cavern's rich musical history, harhar!

24.05.2006 Rehearsed some with the Sugarrush on Friday, I think we did quite alright again even though I was developing a flu duringthe session and the illness got worse as the evening progressed. Later today I'm hopping on the plane with the guys and flying over to UK to play some gigs in (and near) Liverpool. It should be a blast, I haven't been on the road with the boys for quite some time and it's fair to say I've missed it. Let's see how long that feeling lasts when the van starts a-stinking! Anyway, check out further info from Internation Pop Overthrow fest, seeya next week (if we don't indeed run into each other in the UK).

15.05.2006 A Bullets gig on Saturday at Club 25. I guess we did alright, at least Andy J. said that our playing had sounded solid which is not necessarily always the case. In any case it the whole evening was fun, we were all in great spirits and stuff...no pun intended. Thanks to the cool guys of Private Line, we got to loan some of their equipment. I liked the bass amp so much that I had it on so loud that our mix guy had switched off my channel from the mixing desk - and I even had lowered the volume from the level I had at soundcheck! Quite amusing was also that we operated without a setlist because we forgot all of them backstage even though we had them made only a few moments before making our way on stage - what can I say, the most stupidest [sic] band in the business!

12.05.2006 In the crack of dawn a chorus for this newish song idea (I'm not sure what I've called it if I have reported it here, I think we're calling it "All This I've Done For You" for now) appeared to me and the song now sounds just fucking fantastic in my head. I'd need to demo this one right now but as usual, I haven't got the time to do it. C-r-r-r-ap.

11.05.2006 A Bullets rehearsal again yesterday. We proceeded to polish the new ditty "Out Of Control" or actually Eric just had a lil' itsy bitsy thing he wanted to change after the solo. We also ran through rest of the setlist and now we're ready to rock on Saturday at Club25. A funny thing happened in the middle of the rehearsal when we were taking a break, Paati got an SMS in which it stood that The Bullets had been played on Yleisradio's (the Finnish national TV channel) hockey world championship program during some snippet of the match highlights. Strange but cool enough though, they have good taste at ol' Yle. After the rehearsal inspiration struck me driving homewards despite ringing ears and after arriving to casa Ritola I got a verse/chorus thing going for a new song that I'm calling "Because We Were Young" for now. It kinda reminds me of The Boo Radley's "Spaniard" probably because of the chord structure.

08.05.2006 Got the Royal Piss EP mixed and mastered during the weekend, Saturday it was actually. Mikko had had a revelation on the direction he wanted to take the mix and it came out sounding just super just the way he had thought (less echo-y and more narrow vocals etc.) He did a great job (despite us bothering his work with our tired-ass jokes, sorry about that) and now it's up to Nature Sucks Anyway to get the shit pressed on some laser disques. Should happen in the not so distant future...as always.

04.05.2006 A "Beacon" emerged yesterday. It's a new song we're talking about, sans chorus though.

03.05.2006 A lil' Bullets rehearsal yesterday. After getting the usual oldies out of the way, we worked hard on getting the new song ("Rough & Tough etc..." which might actually be called "Out Of Control"...I miss the old title already, hardyhar) sorted and after a few hours of sweat and tears we had a new Bullets gem all ready to blow any fucker's speakers. We're premiering it on Saturday, a week and a half from now when The Bullets are rocking it in Vaasa's Club25 where also Private Line is appearing live and on stage.

02.05.2006 Julius and the boys seemed to have had a good ol' time playing in northern Sweden - and El Gringo too. Such a good time that even though I missed their Vaasa appearance I caught a glimpse of not-that-sober J.Lo later on having a "nap" on my couch Monday morning - when you play hard, you gotta play hard. While Project: Depeche was trekking abroad I had a talk with Firevision's Arttu and tried to lure him into doing some production work for the forthcoming Graceskull album. My luring technique seemed to be working just fine as we now have him onboard to do the recording and production of drums - which is very, very nice because I think we need solid drumtracks this time around and I know Arttu is damn solid when it comes to sounds and stuff (not to mention that his technical abilities are just super). We talked a lot about different possible studio locations where we could pull this off and right now we're making some calls and looking into a couple of alternatives. The drum recordings will probably take place late June or July and we have some serious rehearsing to do before that to get all the tracks flowing just right - can't wait to get back to recording again!

28.04.2006 Julius (along with our beloved cohort Paati) has been hard at work rehearsing Depeche Mode songs again this week. Project: Depeche is heading to Sweden this weekend to play a couple of gigs (28.4. Piteå and 29.4. Skellefteå) and returning for a joint in Vaasa's El Gringo too (30.4.). Catch them live if ya can!

24.04.2006 A busy day on Saturday, first up was the photo shoot for the upcoming Royal Piss record. The front cover will be a shot of Skithund Records CEO, Pelle who we shot first because he was anxious to get the hell out of the studio to the park outside and have a piss. In case this left you puzzled I can reveal that Pelle is a dog but an iron-fisted CEO nonetheless. Then we proceeded to experiment a little with throwing a fistful of glitter in the air (thank you, Coma) and shot that (thank you, FLB). It remains to be seen how this all will translate to beinga record sleeve but I'm aiming on working on the graphics maybe next week so we'll see. After the shoot me, Andy, Coma and Paati hauled our asses to our rehearsal space and had a Sugarrush rehearsal - a first for me in a loooong while. This is mainly because I'm hopping on the plane with the guys to play some gigs with them in Liverpool, England later on in the Spring. I was actually amazed how well I was playing at the rehearsal, it's been shit long since I played any 'Rush song and probably about as long since I played an electric guitar. Of course, it was a barrel of laughs too. The guys have a heap of great new tunes up their sleeves, hopefully they get their bottoms into a studio soon so we'd all get to hear them.

18.04.2006 Julius spent last Thursday evening at DeeKay Studios (located very near our rehearsal space) lending his keyboard talent to a couple songs by this project that's still seeking a name. Their lineup includes a couple of ex-Creamstar members and some musicians more known to the Swedish speaking population of Vaasa. This session was only arranged to demo a couple tracks they'd written so far, I guess the plan is to record a full length album in the summer. More info on this project surely later on.

12.04.2006 Super fun Bullets rehearsal yesterday. Once again though we hadn't rehearsed in several months the songs flowed quite effortlessly and we even got this new song in pretty dandy shape that Mr. Colt brought in - it did take some arranging and a heap of laughs to get there but it was worth it. The title of this tune is currently "Rough n' Tough (Chain My Heart To The Mountain Where The Eagle Flies)".

06.04.2006 A brief visit to Fireworks studios yesterday. Me and Mikko made this one demo for a possible future project, just the music though, no singing which made it a tad more difficult because that's usually where it all starts. It came out pretty cool though, I guess it's something else again, I don't really know what type of music I'd call it.

03.04.2006 One gig older now, Friday was a fun night. Alright, maybe there were a couple of stumbled steps taken in the set but I think we got through the new songs pretty good, even "Hollywood" which started out with Julius havoing no clue whatsoever how the starting riff went. "Remains Of You" was working like a charm however and so was "Seasons", or that's at least how I felt. "Found My Place" however stunk, we're still searching for a live version that would work, I wonder if we'll ever get there...some say that this new, faster version we have isn't working but I don't buy it completely since it's sounding like a million bucks in my head. We'll see what happens with this one. Anyway we have to send out a big thank you to Daisy who drove all the way from Turku to play and a good set they had too, their new stuff is sounding just dandy, check it out! We had talks about making our way to Turku to play with them in the Fall and I hoipe this is true because we had a ton of laughs with these dudes. Great stuff. Oh yeah, here's our setlist before I forget all about it. On Saturday most of us returned to Club 25 to watch Julius tear it up with a band he was playing with way before we bumped into each other, Kimi Shelter & The Avoids. It was a nostalgic evening and the band played probably tighter than I'd ever seen them play before, the crowd also seemed to appreciate the stuff. Halfway through the set Julius's Crumar organ however stopped functioning and despite brave efforts he couldn't get it going so the end of the set was a bit thinner backed only with Rhodes and Wurlitzer.

30.03.2006 The grand final rehearsal before the gig last night and I think it sounded pretty much spectacular. This was actually quite odd since this was Julius had been puking his guts out for some 10 hours a few hours before, I was (and still am) suffering from the flu and yesterday was Jocke's first rehearsals with us in probably six months (and there of course was a big ol' bottle of good ol' Jallu to pass around...well actually Paati had it behind his kit and lent it briefly on request, harhar) - I guess we work best under a bit fucked up conditions. Having two guitars has sounded cool before but I think now our axemen are really working beautifully together whatever the mood may be, rough and tough or gentle like the summer rain (please remind me which shampoo commercial I lifted that from). Julius might also be taking both his Wurlitzer and Rhodes along for the gig which adds some more dimension to the keys. Anyway I hope we'll get through tomorrow's gig without hurling or sneezing our asses off. By the way, be sure to get your ass over to Club25 also on Saturday as Julius will be performing there with his old band Kimi Shelter & The Avoids.

23.03.2006 A cool rehearsal yesterday, I got to test my new acoustic for real for the first time. I got rid of the twang-sound that new strings have after having played the first few songs of the evening and after that (and some techie help from Andy J.) it was a joy to play and the sound was a whole lot better than my old six-string. We mainly tried to get song ready for the gig but needless to say there were again a few outbursts of jammin'...I've said it before and I'll say it again, these guys need to get a gig with this lineup playing improv jams! We tried a new guitar based approach to "Found My Place" because Julius had a problem with playing the piano riff with the Rhodes sound, I guess he had a point there and I think it works now (the piano will however make a return on the record). We also got "Hollywood" in quite a pleasant form, I've actually been quite certain that we'll never play it live but it seems that I've been wrong - which is nice. I have to sing it nearly an octave higher than the original but at least in the rehearsals it worked just great, Frankie's guitar work adds an oomph to the chorus and breakdown section that I quite enjoyed (and that effect is not only applied to "Hollywood", there are other ditties that benefit from some heavier guitar).

22.03.2006 Wrote some lyrics for "Lately I Have Seen The Bluebirds" yesterday. I finished up with three verses which might be enough but the song structure is still a mystery to me so it's too early to tell.

21.03.2006 As you might've noticed it's just a few days until the next Graceskull show, so in case you were wondering where the poster for the gig was, it's here.

20.03.2006 Got myself a new guitar today, it's a beautiful specimen I tell ya, a Gibson acoustic-electric. I've suffered long enough with my previous one and it really was time for a real guitar (even though my playing probably hasn't improved at all during these years...can I blame it on that old axe too, no?) After a day of fiddling with it I think it's gonna take some time before I get used to its shorter neck and a different feel (I also think some guitar doctor should lower the string a tad more to get the action just purrrfect), hope it also does good when plugged in since I haven't had a chance yet to try that.

14.03.2006 Rehearsal time of the week again (that's yesternight of course)! We even had ourselves an axeman this time and it felt good since Frankie-boy added some much needed oopmh to the choruses (and a host of other stuff too). We got "Remains Of You" in pretty good shape and were close to nailing "Hollywood" too, Paati and Andy had a good idea for the ending of "'Wood" which I think we'll use. There's surely still some work to be done but I'm pleased with the results we have this far, the rehearsal just felt really good to me...even though I had to endure the boys' endless jams in between songs, this time they renditioned the likes of Roxette (with Andy singing) and Depeche Mode.

13.03.2006 On Saturday we got round to mixing and mastering the Royal Piss EP (that's me and Andy J. if you weren't familiar with the 'Piss). We had a good time to say the least, thanks partially to some Pirkka-Pekka Petelius & Pedro Hietanen sketches Mikko had dug up, despite having the tape recorder destroy an hour's work in the middle of the night when we were already starting to get tired. We did manage to finish the job but I guess the late hours took their toll as today Mikko announced that he's going to redo the mastering job. He's the sound wiz and he knows this shit so I'm certain it will be even better when he gets the next version done (which might happen as soon as next weekend). I'm still hoping for an April release date but we'll see!

10.03.2006 A lil' rehearsal thingy with Julius yesterday. We actually went through the prospective list of songs for the record and made some remarks on the arrangements and everything else that should be taken into consideration come studiotime. i think we even played some songs and Julle might have gotten his Leslie working too, or at least almost so. It was surprising that apart from a few songs we got pretty much all of them sorted out in our heads, hopefully they hop on the tape as effortlessly.

07.03.2006 Some more minor songwriting yesterday, this song sketch is called "Hoping There's An Answer". That might actually be the final name for the song too, finally a temp name that's any good!

06.03.2006 Some teeny tiny Sunday songwriting to report, yesterday a song I'm caaling "Lately I Have Seen The Bluebirds" appeared to me. It's a pretty strong melody, hope I won't fuck it up when I find a chorus for the song.

02.03.2006 A real rehearsal for a change, it was actually very nice. We had our four man lineup (with Paati and Andy onboard) and it proved a fine one at getting some songs and arrangements sorted out. I think we're in for quite a workload in getting these songs ready for studio and yesterday was a good beginning. "Found My Place" found a new arrangement which I really enjoyed and we played "Hollywood" for the first time ever I think but also jammed on "Hush", "For The Remnant", "Stifle" and even some "Bring Me Love". The real jams came at the end of the session (as they tend to do) when the boys started playing these impromptu Hammond-jazz tunes from the likes of Black Sabbath (that's what listening to too much Casualties of Jazz does to you), Bob Marley and even the tune from Pelle Hermanni (which we once tried to incorporate into "Beautifullest Lie"'s breakdown section). Needless to say that my cheeks (the ones on my face, you perv) were aching from laughing too much, I hope the boys get together to perform somewhere with this lineup! Julius previewed his ned amp thing in the rehearsal and it seemed to work just fine (without any adjustment which is a rare pleasure!), it produced a goodsized racket despite looking somewhat sketchy for now (it was still sans box). Hope we have time to practise again soon, it left me with a warm fuzzy feeling, hardyhar.

27.02.2006 A fun little session on Saturday with Paati, we jammed on a quite vast number of songs, me and him. Actually some of them were all new and while other jams were clearly best left at the rehearsal room floor ("Halelulujah Johnny") I think at least one of them deserves to be worked into a real song ("Get In Line" which was a quite poppy number). We also thought of arrangements and stuff for the songs that we have in line for the forthcoming record, also tried out some drum stuff for them. On Sunday one more song popped in my head to close off the weekend, I've had this idea on how the record is supposed to start and this tune might be just what I have been thinking about. It of course needs some heavy arranging but at least in my heads it should do the trick. It's probably called "This Must Be Home".

22.02.2006 A little bit of recording with Julius yesterday, it had been quite a long time since last time. We recorded wurly/vox demos of "The Light Is Changing" and "Nightmares (Here Right Now)". I don't know if J.Lo had been practising or what but we did almost everything first take and it sounded cool. We then proceeded to make a compilation cd of all the songs-in-progress we've had hidden deep in Julius's computer. The purpose of this cd is for us to get ideas on what songs are to be recorded for the upcoming third Graceskull album. I think we already have a pretty good idea on a handful of songs that aren't going to make the cut and equally decent idea on which absolute must be done, anyway listening to these tunes hopefully provides the blueprint for the album which makes it easier to rule out songs etc. We've actually been quite actively discussing the recordings of our next album recently and I have a feeling that something's going to be happening in the not all that distant future. I sure hope so, we have a bunch of songs we'd really want you to hear.

16.02.2006 Some new songwriting for a change yesterday, I penned at least a verse or two for a song I'm calling "I Can't Be Him For You" (in lack of a better title for the time being).

15.02.2006 Aw shucks, I almost forgot to mention that the aforementioned Bullets article is now up for reads in the latest edition of City magazine (that Vaasa region's version). Check it out, I liked it so why wouldn't ya?

13.02.2006 I can't really remember when I would have sung as much as I have this past weekend (but I also didn't remember how much fun it can be). First off on Friday I recorded some Graceskull shit, namely vocals for the "Remains Of You" demo I've had lying around for months without a vocal track. I was watching "Back To The Future Part II" while recording them so they ended up alright but not as stellar as said movie, au naturelle. I also got some of our recorded past shows on the computer, they'd also been lying around on some unlabeled minidiscs. I don't think we'll be releasing any of the live stuff due to not-so-pleasant sound but it's nice to get to hear the gigs, especially a good while after the show - they also might provide some insight on how we're going to record them when the time comes. On Saturday me and Andy climbed a few stairs up to the Petting Room Studios again and recorded all the remaining three songs' worth of vocals in about five hours - not bad! I think we did great, lots of first take stuff and I'm proud for the both of us, I think we really stretched beyond our normal performances on the vox (I just remeber how our singing was when we were rehearsing these tunes). Of course Mikko's usual big bag of tricks had a whole lot to do with the stuff that got recorded, not to mention that he provided just the right feeling for the session by playing us this clip of a stand-up routine by Pablo Fransisco, this man's material and delivery was just hilarious beyond my words. So get his tapes if you can, the laughs are guaranteed. Anyway, everything is now recorded and we agreed to do the mixing in a couple of weeks, it's good to get a little rest before the finalization process. But the good thing is that I don't think we need all that much mixing actually as the rough mixes sound pretty damn close to what we're after. Release date? Well, we'll see but I'd like to see it out April or May or something because at least the opening track "Silence Is Broken" has a kinda summery vibe to it, it just goes well with sunshine, y'know? Meanwhile Julius and Paati have been working across Ostro-Bothnia with the Depeche Mode cover project this weekend and while I haven't heard from the boys yet, I heard reports from Friday night's gig at Superstereo and everyone said that it had been a good show. I think there are some still some dates to come so don't miss 'em (I'll be posting the new dates when I get my hands on them).

10.02.2006 Everybody in Vaasa, get your ass down to Superstereo tonite for a setful of Depeche Mode covers as Project: Depeche (featuring of course the Graceskull talents of Julius and Paati) gets their rocks off on stage. I heard last week's mini tour had been wet and wild so I'd expect the same from tonite's gig.

06.02.2006 I've been having downtime due to getting my back jacked while trying to get my socks one morning a week or so ago. Now I'm actually upright again - or something quite close - so hopefully I'll be returning to the normal state of things soon-ish. First and foremost this should mean that me and Andy should return to the studio to finish up the Royal Piss EP, the voals are still missing. Anyway on Friday however one of my alter-egos, namely Günther "Fast Glove" Uzi of The Bullets, got interviewed for an upcoming lil' article on the aforementioned rock band in City magazine. I guess the rag should hit the stands later this week actually, or maybe it was next - I dunno but keep your eyes peeled.

27.01.2006 First gig of 2006 was just conformed as we're hitting the good ol' Club 25 in Vaasa on 31st of March. Turku's very own Daisy is also making an appearance that night so it should be well worth your while (not to mention a few euros).

25.01.2006 Get yer ass down to DOM in Vaasa tonight because Julius and Paati's Depeche Mode cover project thingy is performing there!

23.01.2006 "Säestä mun tunteita." The weekend-long studio session was highly succesful for The Royal Piss if you ask me - the resulting sound and music surpassed my hopes of what would be a nice lil' buzzing EP (okay, it was a load of fun too of course). It still buzzes like a motherfucker but it also kicks some major behind to boot, I really can't express enough gratitude to Mikko and also Arttu (who popped in for some added sound support) for their sound engineering and production genius. Friday night we hauled in the equipment and in a moment's time we had the drums set up and the tape rolling, we really didn't do a lot of soundchecking (or if we did, I was away eating candy or something) so it was strange to notice how damn good the sound was when we played it back the first time. I had been kinda nervous for a long time about recording the drums (because we're not really the world's greatest drumming duo, me and Andy) but once we we're on our way, the drumtracks were laid on tape pretty damn effortlessly. I even did "Underneath The Storm" in one take - in rehearsals I never got past the first verse without stopping. Of course some finetuning and chopping was made to the tracks by Mikko to get the songs rollin' just right. On Saturday we started with the basstracks and by the time Andy got to the studio in the afternoon we had them pretty much on the hard drive. Next up we started with the guitar stuff which also had their fair share of one take wonders - and the sound was again just faaantastic, I guess at times it had more low frequencies than the bass actually (tech detail: I never even touched the E string on the bass during the whole weekend). When it came time to record the solos and the lead guitar stuff, Andy started taking things veeery seriously and attacked his axe so violently that a fair amount of blood was sprayed on the strings and surroundings - but once again, the audio we got was super even though Mikko seemed to be a bit suspicious of some of the more exotic sounds that exited the amp here and there. All the guitar stuff was completed by sundown on Sunday (even I got a few "solos" in there, namely on "Sidewalk" and "121st Minute") so we kinda ran out of time, we only did a kind of a vocal test on "Underneath The Storm" to see if the vocals worked on the songs at all. I thought it sounded pretty good, but there are a lot of things to be sorted out with the vocal sound and whatnot since me and Andy are singing on top of each other (not physically though, you pervert you) the whole time. We basically agreed that we'd take a couple of weeks off (because we need to lose the weight we put on by eating enormous heaps of candy during the weekend...and maybe rest our ears too) and return to the studio to lay down the vox in a couple of weeks' time. Can't wait to get this stuff completed, I assure you it's gonna be great - guaranteed Nature Sucks Anyway shit, you know the deal!

20.01.2006 Yesterday saw the final gathering of The Royal Piss before the studio sessions. We went through the songs one more time and made actually some drastic changes to at least "Underneath The Storm" which was cut shorter (there was a verse in there we don't think anyone will miss). Andy had also finally delivered the lyrics to "Silence Is Broken" which were great, they kinda summed up the whole EP as a thematic entity (we toyed around with the name "Paul King EP" but don't wait to see it on the sleeve of the record, hurhur). The gear is packed and Andy has acquired an uplifting (if only you'd see the photo...) photo of Kevin Shields (the patron saint for these sessions) - we're ready to rock! In about three hours' time we'll be setting up drums at Petting Room studios, I'm amped!

19.01.2006 A tired Bullets rehearsal yesterday, we did however manage to get "Friday Night" in some sort of form I guess. At least I got a new bassline going, the old one wasn't quite right for the riff in the verse. We jammed on some other stuff too but for some reason it came out sounding like Bloc Party...or that's at least what the boys said, I really haven't heard enough of their stuff to give you an expert opinion. Anyway the Bloc Party stuff was of course immediately thrown overboard and into the bin as we are the band with the black plastic jackets. Damn right.

13.01.2006 Yay, another Royal Piss rehearsal with Andy J. last night. Some song structures were worked on and we tried to rehearse the drum parts too but I guess we'll see how it'll all work out when we get in the studio - which will be happening next Friday. It's gonna be great to be back recording some shit and it's always even better when you don't exactly know what the end product is gonna be like.

10.01.2006 Yeah, here's the DJ list from last Friday.

09.01.2006 A little deejay thingy on Friday, me and Paati and Coma from The Sugarrush played a few (actually 99 to be precise) tunes in DOM on Friday. Oh yeah, The FLB also managed to slip in a couple of ditties which were more or less questionable choices (Pantera surely managed to kill the mood, harhar). It was great fun and I think that the music was just as great. The setlist will appear here as soon as I get off my ass and type it off the tiny paper slips onto which it was handwritten by us three. I guess I will be down at DOM playing a few tunes again later this Spring (of course with some other jackasses from the Graceskull famiglia) so be on the lookout. Meanwhile Julius has been busy rehearsing with Paati and a few other dudes for the upcoming gigs of this Depeche Mode tribute project thingy they've got going on. Apparently Julius has learned to know his way around his Juno synth a whole lot better because of this so be prepared for some analogue action when they hit the stages all across Finland - here are the dates so far:
   03.02. Discotheque Fever, Jyväskylä
   05.02. On The Rocks, Helsinki
   10.02. Superstereo, Vaasa
   11.02. After Eight, Pietarsaari
So go check 'em out, I'll update y'all when more gigs appear. But for now, rock on!

04.01.2006 Further work on the Royal Piss lyrics yesterday, I did the words for "Anotha Year" (which might have a different title once we get it on tape...or maybe not). Now there's just one more song missing lyrics and we decided to leave that up to Andy so I can now lift my feet on the table and take it eeezy.