Usually when making a period piece, you gotta be really careful not to break the immersion.

Like, imagine british soldiers with modern pompadours, listening hip-hop from a boombox in WW1 trench setting. It’s a pretty funny image, but nothing but silliness in being established there.

I tend to be a full-blown puritan when it comes to such matters. No powerful drum sounds in 60’s pop, no guitar shredding in polynesian folk music, and no synthesizers in romantic classical music.

VINTAGE CHILL is an exception, albeit not as extreme as the examples I just made. It’s kind of… 60’s to 80’s vintage chilly-chill stuff.

The illusion is gone, but I like it!

13 seconds of moshing – Doesn’t even break a sweat.

3 minutes and 27 seconds of moshing – Not bad. Some sweat, minor dizziness & a couple of barely noticeable bruises. Mind the phone though.

Gigful of moshing – Several minor bruises, elbow to the cheek bone, stiff neck. Clothes covered in various unwanted substances. 10 % chance to lose car keys, 20 % chance to lose phone, 85 % chance to lose Dave. Nothing a good nights sleep won’t fix.

Lollapalooza of moshing – Achievement unlocked: The leaking tent.

Decade of moshing – Whiplash, 1d3 missing teeth and permanently hardened toenails. Gained a need to wear an embarrasing hat, use the word “man” in the end of every sentence and several bad tattoos. Tinnitus.

Full professional career of moshing – Earned the title: “Kerry King jr.”

500 YEARS OF MOSHING

In the beginning, was the intention to rip-off “Walk on the Wild Side” by Lou Reed. (Or at least it’s famous bass line thingy)

In the middle, someone dared to add in more happy-happy things, like guitars, harmonics and ding-ding.

In the end, there’s even a positive bend, on loan from country music. (Not that I’d ever return it) That was meant to be the “open door” in OPEN DOORS.

Uh oh, lots of name-dropping going on this month.

Here’s one more: Phyllis.

How many famous Phyllis’ can you name?

My Phyllis count stops at 1. Logan.

Now I’m off to listen the Lovejoy main theme. It’s soooo good.

Octave bass. It’s great, isn’t it?

To answer my own question, yes, you’re absolutely right! Octave bass is wonderful!

Although it’s heyday was a good 40+ years ago, I still think it’s somewhat too dominating element to be used frequently. It’s like you have to hear it being used by someone else to gain the permission to stick it in your own music.

You know what, I did hear it being used.

Therefore UNKPOP has it.

Hmm, listening Maurice White & Co. more often would grant me a truckload of octave bass-tokens.

Mother of all hmms.

Producing SPELKLOKK was a theoretical struggle. It was all about taming the chords – making them sound smooth, although the structure is actually pretty complicated.

Well, maybe not that complicated. More like clever.

The process reminded me of something my high school finnish teacher said about writing a good essay: The writing part must be hard in order to make the result easy to read.

Well said!

So, what you’re hearing today is domesticated nightmarish glockenspiels.

Then some metal.

With COLD SUN SILENCE, my starting point was Paradise Lost / Amorphis-sort of stuff. You know, that melodic guitar hovering over power chord mass.

(Maybe there’s more of the latter, with it’s folksy & grim feel)

And yes, the lead guitars go in thirds, like those boys in Thin Lizzy & Iron Maiden used to do. Although in this kind of heavier context, they sound more “hetfieldistic”.

Small chunk of winter.

Right. Let’s get this over with.

WASHED was the first tune I made, when these times begun. You know. So, washing your hands was pretty much the thing to do.

Like otherwise I wouldn’t wash my hands dozens of times a day… With moisturising soap or not… Washing after coming home, washing at work, washing at friends, at public places when possible… Washing before, during and after cooking, eating & doing dishes… Washing after visiting a certain room found in every house that has running water, but where you extremely rarely cook in… Washing in the morning, during the day, in the everning…

Washing free zone is located in the sleepy lands.

Also, things me & you should always do, even when we’re not told to:

– Not to sneeze / cough on other peoples faces
– Try to maintain one Abdul-Jabbar (2.18m) of safety distance to other people
– Wipe your feet before entering any indoor space
– Say thank you / sorry when necessary
– Not to drink battery acid even when very thirsty

– Soundweave
– Odd combo of assorted brass & woodwinds
– Each instrument shall only play one note
– Notes are to be long & smooth
– D/Ab
– Let’s see what other chords we shall find
– Make the tune “breathe”

These ingredients = DAb CONGLOMERATION

I slipped the “one note only”-rule a bit. You know, for artistic reasons. The trombone felt like having it’s moment in the limelight.

And then we went all LoFi.

GHOST TRAIN twists & turns. It’s mobile and solid and just keeps on going.

At this point of writing this, I started wondering why ghosts? Why not just a normal train with steam engine, coal and lots of noise & smoke?

Well, I did watch the old Disney cartoon “Lonesome Ghosts” back then. I didn’t realise this until now.

This is how monkey brain works I guess.

So, some spooky – or spoopy – mechanical surf rock for ye.

We got names.

We got happenings, comfortable & dangerous. We got places to actually be in and places in the darkest corners of your mind. We got time.

We got colours, we got feelings and we got a condition that makes you wanna dance.

We got intentions, both good & not so.

We got numbers & we got sequels.

We got anagrams, we got word play and we got onomatopoeia.

We got memories, we got headache, we got double & triple entendres and we got something that’s quite absurd & abstract.

We got humans & we got dwarves.

Voila, now we also got GNOMES.

Coming up: Elves, orcs, dragonkin, lizardmen, pixies, skaven etc.