website://biography

the road to daydream - travels across space, time and all sorts of sillyness...

by Thomas Lilley (edited by Matti)

It was November 2004 and we'd just lost our studio, recordings and equipment in a fire. And a bit earlier we'd been sacked by Warner. No studio, no record, no record deal... But quitting wasn't an option and we started hunting for a new studio space right away.

And so we found ourselves at an old meatpacking facility in a small claustrophobia inducing little hole that smelled like rotting flesh. Or, in other words, in our new studio. We tried to recall our memories from that place but really, there are none. Personally, I (Thomas) only remember that we drunk a lot of beer and Jaloviina there. We had a Lidl right next to us with great offers on Grafenwalder (editor's note: 0,99 per can!). Then we would get hammered and start jamming on CSNY's 'Almost cut my hair' or a song called 'Freewheeling' that Tomi had written. Then we'd hit the town after 12 cans totally shit-faced. Ah, the memories... which I obviously don't have.

We were in no rush to record the album as we weren't signed and it took us two and a half years to complete the aptly-named 'It's about time'. Partially it took so long to record because, although the songs were almost all ready, we had to record loads of stuff numerous times. The place was terrible for micing drums and we could never get a good sound there, like we used to get much easier at our old place in Piispanristi. Almost everything else sounded rubbish as well, at least in our opinion, and we used to record new stuff to hide old stuff and that's why the record became rather massive. But we had a good idea what the album should be like. We had come up with the idea about a record that tells the story of a band that travels through time and get caught in a strange time. Basically this was our story, being a retro-voiced band in the modern world.

We finally finished the record sometime in the spring of 2007. By this time we had been kicked out of the hellhole at Karjakatu and found a new, much nicer place at Barker in Raunistula. We finished off the record there and by this time Jukka had bought electric drums which we used to trigger the Superior Drummer programme. This made such a difference in our recordings. Finally we had decent drum sounds which we could build around. I think the programme is used on only one song on 'It's about time' though. Care to guess?

After some persuasive moves, we got signed with Elements. They liked the album and we really got along, nice chaps as they are. The release of the album in February 2008 was a big thing for us having worked on it for what seems like forever. We had a great launch party and gig at Dynamo and we were getting great reviews from all the media. YLEX, a national radio channel and trend-setter, decided to take our single, 'Heartbeat', on rotation which was great! That spring we also had a first gigs abroad at the International Pop Overthrow festival in Liverpool. We played The Cavern Club, which we were super-thrilled about!

But what we really looked forward to was recording some fresh new stuff. I think we started recording new stuff already before the release of It's about time but the recordings really got on the way in autumn 2008. The recording process was really effortless and arrangements and lyrics were easier than ever. I think fiddling around with It's about time for so long left us with a wealth of new ideas that we were now finally able to use. We had almost all the songs ready even before Its about time was released so it was basically just a matter of purging all that stuff to tape. We were, and still are, excited about the new songs and sounds we were able to create with our new equipment. I guess that gets us to just about this moment and the eve of the release of our third album, 'Daydream'. More thoughts on this as soon as I have some thoughts on it. Now I'm just really excited!