Uutisia ja kamarunkkausta

No updates for 6 weeks. What have we been doing? Well, we've mostly been rehearsing the material for the next album "Karkelo" that is supposed to come out in June. The recordings will probably start on Monday the 16th. We'll be recording in a different studio this time. We did the last three albums in the same studio so I guess it was time for a change. We are going to be recording some stuff live which means we're all going to be in the studio from the day one and play the songs together and record it. Hopefully we'll get at least drum and bass tracks recorded that way.
For the first time I've given up one of my sort of principles. Our guitars are downtuned a full step to D. I've refused to downtune my bass which has led to some extra difficulties with some riffs based on open strings on guitar. Now I've given up and at least four songs on the new album will be played with a 4-string bass tuned down to D. Let's see what happens if any of them appears on the live set.

Last Sunday we had a photo session for the album booklet and promo material in Mynämäki. We are again using the services of Harri Hinkka. I hate doing photo shoots in general. Jonne for example looks like a natural performer for the camera but I am definitely not. Anyway, the things are not that bad with Harri. Overall atmosphere is always relaxed and it's always easier to work when he actually tells us what he's after. And this band can actually get fun out of anything so it was ok. The cover artist Örkki was also there already at this point working together with the photographer so maybe his work will be a bit easier as well.

The next live shows are going to the ones with Tankard in Finland in March. That means YO-talo, Tampere on Thursday 26th and Tavastia, Helsinki on Friday 27th. For some reason our people haven't been able to sell a Saturday show anywhere which is really strange. Saturday and Tankard. C'mon, how can you NOT sell that?

In the meantime we canceled one show in Lithuania. That was supposed to be a one-day-festival headlining show, but we were informed that the festival would have a political and religious themes that we are not really happy with. The promoter kept explaining that this is not the case but they never provided us any better explanation of their poster which clearly said that the festival is against "Catholic church of Lithuania, Lithuanian gay community, Jewish community of Lithuania and Human Rights Institute of Vilnius." Those texts were by the way only on the Lithuanian poster, not on the English one. All this combined with the fact that one of the other bands on the festival is listed in Wikipedia as "neo-nazi metal band" with songs like "Juden Raus!" and "Blut Und Ehre" led us to believe that it's not the right place for us. Maybe we were wrong, maybe not, but we decided that the risk was too high.

Amfisound is building us some instruments again. Cane will get a new Les Paul style guitar quite soon I think and I am hoping that my new bass will be done before the North American tour. The bass will be technically basically the same as my current Amfisound. Same measures, same microphone setup, same preamp. Otherwise it will be almost completely different. The body will be mahogany instead of alder, but with spalted maple top. The neck will be through body instead of bolt-on. Fretboard will be rosewood. The neck will be 3-piece maple with walnut stripes. All metal parts will be gold plated. The shape will be exactly like the classic Rickenbacker 4003. Except that the body will be bit thicker since Ric is quite thin and we're trying to build this one a bit heavier than my current Amfisound. Hence the mahogany on the body as well. And of course mine will be a 5-stringer with 35" scale which will make it quite a bit longer than an original 4003 which has a 33,25" scale. That will be the coolest bass ever. Or extremely heavy collection of really expensive parts that is unplayable because of it's size and weight.

Now that we're on the subject of equipment masturbation I can tell that I am also building myself a new live rig as well. I used to have SansAmp PSA 1.1 preamp but since two of them broke up exactly the same way in less than 6 months I finally decided to leave that out from the live rig. It's still a good preamp AT HOME or IN THE STUDIO. Anyway, the new rig will be really simple. It will consist of two rackmount SansAmp RBIs, two Shure SLX4 receivers and one rackmount tuner by Behringer, all hosted in a heavy duty 4-unit rack case. Two identical sets of receiver, preamp and tuner. So, it's not a disaster if one SansAmp breaks up on a tour again!