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The studio is now booked!

The countdown has begun and everything is ruined, as always on occasions such as this. Personally I have no idea how to lay down my parts properly and maintain my self respect while doing so. It seems I have to record my drumming with the combined aid of advanced technology and a stunt bassist because mr. Korkkinen is unavailable to help me out on those particular dates scheduled for drum tracks. Also there's a brand new song floating around, waiting for lyrics. And we have very limited amount of time to rehearse everything. And we still haven't confirmed who will release the eventual album.

On the positive side, at least some things have been settled. We're definitely going to call the album "Tentatively Titled". Or alternatively "Tentatively Tilted". We might even definitively call it "Tentatively Tilted Cross", to be fashionably antireligious and vaguely satanic as well. We're pretty certain we're not going to call it "Tentatively Titled And Cross" though, because that sounds rather silly.

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Me and Make drove out to check the studio and found it good and very much in the middle of nothing much at all. Except lots and lots of nature, naturally surrounding a hapless recording artist with the air of inevitability that gently whispers in ones' ear "yes you are supposed to concentrate on recording now and that's why all the possible points of interest and disturbance factors have been carefully removed from this location."

Four weeks to go and then we'll start recording. Make has retreated out of reach for the next week to meditate, levitate and possibly also rehabilitate. I'm feverishly pondering upon important topics such as how to come up with words to the final song and where to find expensive enough Amarone to light up our forthcoming lonely evenings at the studio.

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Two days to go and nothing is fine. We will start recording next Monday and probably lay down only the drum tracks and maybe some guitars and then reconsider our options. I'm pretty pissed off about this and am expecting to see my pissed-offness ascending to new heights as days go by and nothing much positive happens in the financial front. More of this later.

This is not the happy start I was looking forward to, with warm and relaxed atmosphere floating over productive and easy-going days. This is quite the opposite and therefore I'm not going to bother with any witty remarks about the possible title of the forthcoming album.

[e]

As it happens, the recording has started. Even though I feel so pissed off about it all that I can hardly breathe and I think Make shares my sentiments on this. No deals have been signed for the album so it seems we might have to cough up the money ourselves to pay for the studio. Which is outrageous of course.

The studio is called Clonework so obviously the first thing we did upon entering the premises was creating clones of ourselves to perform the more tedious tasks of the recording process. Namely actual recording and playing of the instruments. This gave me and Make the much needed time to sit outside on the porch, smoking cigarettes and eating fair trade bananas.

At first things appeared to progress smoothly, but as we popped inside after an afternoon nap in the sun to check out what's going on, we found out the finished material to be seriously lacking in quality and had to delete everything. We also took the clones outside and had them shot, ignoring their complaints and ridiculous claims that the songs were crap to start out with and therefore couldn't be improved to the point of sounding halfway decent, no matter how virtuously you tried to perform them.

So I had to step in myself, feeling highly irritated but prepared to do what was needed in order to get back to sitting in the sun as soon as possible. Originally we had scheduled three days for the drum tracks but I accidentally laid down almost everything in the first day.

Although no one seems to be interested in releasing the album, we've still decided that we're definitely going to call it "The Clear Bright Darkness".

[e]

Oh yes the recording is moving on, like a stunned whale navigating between a flock of icebergs and other obstacles of the sort one often comes across the icy shores surrounding the North Pole. The whale of course being us poor Sinisthra, stranded among the chilling waves of the Music Industry, here cunningly represented as the allegorical  Arctic Ocean, with looming icebergs posing as evil and fickle record companies, popping up just when you don't expect them to with promises of this as well as that, not to mention everything that falls between those two, only to disappear again without further notice of any kind, for weeks at the time. And the North Pole probably being the not very apt at all symbol of Eden itself, or some other place of similar qualities, where one always longs to find one's way to but never seems to make it in the end. In our case this might mean The Album Release Party.

Anyway. I haven't been to the studio for the past few days but other people closely associated with Sinisthra reportedly have been and this means there's all kinds of stuff recorded by now. We move on to bass and keyboards soon and if things carry on happening according to our plans we'll soon have secured the funding needed to start recording the vocals.

So it all looks a little brighter at the moment. Therefore we will not call the album "The Clear Bright Darkness" as we definitely were going to, but something other in its' stead, probably definitely "Seven Shades Of Black". Although there's going to be only six songs on the album. Which is all very allegorical and metaphorical, come to think of it now.

Well it is!

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And so it came to pass that things only looked brighter for the tiniest bit of moment before normality was restored. We had to drop out of the studio because deep in our hearts we felt the wrongness of paying for it ourselves and were forced to act upon it. Therefore the keyboard parts we recorded today were done entirely elsewhere. The sun was shining outside (as it always does in Lohja, no matter the hour or season), I got very comfortable on the leather sofa leafing through a biography of Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow, mr. Mäkinen slumped relatively comfortably over his laptop recording equipment and mr. Vainio wavered over his instrument and clearly didn't think "comfortable" ranked among the top 10 words to describe his current stressed out situation of laying down some serious keyboarding mayhem.

The basic tracks sound promising. My drumming is much more solid than before and sometimes almost manages to tug at the sleeve of this thing some other drummers seem to have called "groove". Make's rhythm guitar tracks are so tightly played that when he doubled them it caused something he tells me is called "phase issue" where two tracks  sound so close to each other that they cancel each other out. Sounds like a case of royal bullshit to me this "phase issue"-terminology.

Now that I seem to accidentally spill out actual facts instead of the usual blather I might as well "reveal" that the album will contain new versions of all four of the songs we released as demos at the start of this year, with no significant changes to them apart from a few tweaks to tempos here and there. There's also an old song we wrote before our first album was released, and a brand new one we just about managed to complete in time to include it. And we've decided that we're definitely going to call the album "Songs That Fell Out Of A Pigs' Nose".

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We are at it again! We have returned to it! And this time, this very final time we will stay returned to it for as long as it takes to actually complete it. This "it" in this case being The Bloody Album. Which will definitely not be called "The Bloody Album" since that would be exceedingly misleading, as well as uneasingly displeasing. The ostriches have spoken and their eggs are laid as a token. Although their english was broken the sleeping one has woken, wondering when did ostriches learn to speak and, more importantly, what's with all this digressing and would it help matters to get aggressive. But to seek the rhymes in this could sometimes lead amiss even a seeker most brutish. As they say.

But Sinisthra has woken, yet again, from a short sleep and slumber undeep, and old positions are assumed, the songs are exhumed and the recording is resumed. Our feathered caps are plumed and all is far from doomed. The phase we have entered is called "recording the vocals" and coincidentally that is exactly what we've been doing lately. Here's an example: only last Saturday Tomi laid down an amazing performance of "Closely Guarded Distance", resulting in everyone present at the time being mightily chuffed and biffed. Just listen to this raw display of emotion:

http://www.sinisthra.com/temp/sniff.mp3

Naturally we all immediately quit our day jobs, just like we did on the similar occasion some years ago when recording the first album. And speaking of the first album, we're definitely going to call this new album "Last Of The Stories Of Long Past Glories" too, because since the first one failed to sell thousands of copies the second one won't probably perform much better and if we give all our albums the same title, by around the fifth one we may be able to say "Yes, our "Last Of The Stories Of Long Past Glories" has sold over ten thousand copies" and not talk with an entirely forked tongue.

On second thought, that's not a good idea at all. Luckily we have reached a position where we can safely claim that we'll definitely call the album "Silence Ten Feet Tall".

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We're still at it. And this time, we have the pictures to prove it. Some more vocals were recorded yesterday, some new vocal lines were coughed up that require new lyrics and even an additional song presented itself, somewhat unexpectedly and also needing some kind of lyrics to make it a proper song. I'm expected to partake in some light hearted jocularity of writing down humorous captions for these here following pictures but since I seem to be freshly out of anything bordering on humorous I will do no such thing almost at all.

Here's Tomi going at it, with his best singing jacket on and his hands utilised to keep his skull from splitting in two when hitting those higher notes.



And here's Tomi, further going at it, effortlessly using both of his hands at the same time to keep his head from falling off while concentrating on proper pronounciation of certain words contained in the lyrics.



Here's Make, recording most professionally the act of Tomi going at it. Using both of his hands in an indisputable display of his professionalism and the ability to really focus on things.



And here's Make, further recording (presumably at least as professionally (and as focused) as in the previous picture, if not more) Tomi further going at (probably still holding his head for whatever reason), with the renewed Sinisthra rhythm section boldly standing back, not getting in the way more than necessary, observing the proceedings most professionally and somberly, as well as maybe even producing the proceedings a bit, in a most professional way.
 


Oh yes it's going to be a lovely album indeed and it's definitely going to be called "The Ever Present Elseness", for some reason or other.

Also, the actual identity of the renewed part of our rhythm section will be discussed in a more detailed way, later on. Possibly Assuredly accompanied by embarrassing pictures.

[e]

And suddenly it's May! Just like that. And the album still isn't finished, although most of the actual recording is now finally behind us. At the moment we are reviewing the results and trying to find some time and a proper place to add the final guitar overdubs by mr. Välimäki. Then we give the songs away for mixing, to an outside individual. This will probably take most of the forthcoming summer. It's been a harrowing and soul-grinding experience, putting together this album so naturally we can hardly wait to start working on some new songs as soon as possible. We'll just release this one first, then move effortlessly on to recording the next one. Ta-da. Easy as ear-muffs and simple as siesta. That's how things work in music business.

And to make the release of the album even simpler and easier we've decided upon the title of the album and it definitely will not be "Raappahousut Lotkottaa", no matter what our Finnish heritage and the awareness of our national spirit might dictate.

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Sizzling hot news from the hub of hubbub and the harbourage of hagiophagism:

The!
Sinisthra!
Album!
Is!
Further!
Delayed!

At the moment Tomi is re-recording all his vocal tracks, for reasons mostly known to himself and not many others, in a proper studio environment, and although there was nothing exactly wrong with the original vocal tracks, recorded earlier this year, this time he really seems to deliver and surpass his previous efforts. Judging by the samples we've heard so far and assuming they are not computer-generated forgery. This has naturally wrecked our plans somewhat regarding the actual release of the album but at this point a few extra months of delay is just a natural development. The album will be called "Alive Awake Aflame", most definitely and as sure as eggs is eggs. There's also a definite probability that the album might be called something else entirely, but definitely not "Something Else Entirely".