Nonsense is the word

September 28th, 2007

Hi,

As you know, we somehow managed to get ourselves into a position of competing against 4 other bands for a place as the supporting act for Funeral for a Friend. Don’t know how that happened. Anyway, the voting has ended and I am sad to say that we didn’t win. I and Johannes are going to Nosturi on that day anyway since I had already bought the tickets before the competition begun, so some comfort there. But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to play there. FfaF is one of my (many) favourite bands, so it would’ve been a small dream come true to play as the supporting act for them. But you can’t win everything, and to be honest, the band that won the contest is a really good band. In fact all of the bands that got to the final were/are great.

Then on to other things, on our gig at Salo market place a few weeks ago there were two other bands playing with us: Dead by Gun, which is probably familiar to most of you, and Automatic Eye, which probably is not that familiar to most. That was the case with me too. I shortly listened to their songs a few days before the gig, and it sounded good to me. After our own gig (we were the first band to perform) Ari, Jouni and Johannes went to have a bite, but I decided to skip because I was anxious to hear AE play (this later on proved to be a good decision from another point of view too: pizza was served for the artists a bit later). The band really blew my mind. I don’t know what it was, I mean their music isn’t the most exotic or original out there, but it really got to me. I myself like Jimmy Eat World, and if I’m not mistaken Automatic Eye’s vocalist Pete (who makes the songs, I think…) likes JEW’s music quite much too. Maybe it’s that. Or maybe it doesn’t have anything to do with it. Beats me. Why am I even trying to figure out why? I like their music, and that’s that. Check them out, maybe you’ll like them too.

What else, hmm, let’s see. Well the normal topic, new cd’s. I’ve bought a few since the previous update. Just today I bought Waking Ashland’s “Composure” and Ronnie Day’s “The Album”. A few weeks ago I widened my CD collection with such albums as Gratitude’s “Gratitude” and Number One Fan’s “Compromises”, among others. More to come…

Thrice is releasing two EP’s next month, the first samples sound very interesting. The EP’s will probably sound good, the two tracks I’ve heard are close to the same style than Vheissu was so something to look for, definitely.

I’ve been to a couple of live gigs. Disco Ensemble played a good show at Klubi, Turku. They do know what they’re doing. I saw them at Ruisrock this summer, and I have to say that they are even better in a club environment. Or I guess they do play as good, but their energy is much more visible on smaller indoor venues. I saw Entwine and Molly Grows Up at Klubi too a few weeks after Disco Ensemble. Not that many people had found their way to Klubi, but good shows anyway from both of the bands.

Last weekend I got to see Amorphis, at Klubi obviously. Klubi is pretty much the only decent rock club at Turku, a real shame that there aren’t more places like that. But it’s pure economy, people don’t go to see any gigs, so there’s no point in organising them. I saw Amorphis at Ruisrock as well, and they were really good both times. At Klubi they played mostly new songs (Eclipse / Silent Waters –stuff) and boy did they play good. The singer has to be one of the best vocalists in Finland. Ok, it’s almost impossible to compare vocalists from different genres, but let’s put it this way: he is the man for the job, for sure. It’s a pure pleasure to listen him singing or screaming.

As you see, we’ve started a studio diary. We decided to do it Finnish since the vast majority of the visitors here are Finns… I often do wonder why we decided to do our site in English in the first place. Well, at least it keeps my English skills on a decent level. But back to the matter at hand: we’ll write some sort of summary of the studio stories in English at some point.

I’m going to go to see Apulanta at KÃ¥ren at the 6th of October. Lots of memories, I’ve seen them at KÃ¥ren quite a few times in my youth. Looking forward to that, their sounds have improved quite much from the those days. And in recent years even more, since Toni bought Mesa/Boogies Triple Rectifier, an amp I’m drewling for by the way. The curse of GAS (Gear Acquisition Syndrome). Till next time, now I have to go and record some guitars and vocals. Later,

-Kari