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November
11th, 2003:
So, just when we thought all the guitars were recorded... they weren't!
Being the kind of guy that Michael is, he couldn't let it go, so he went
back to "Utbränd & slutkörd" and did some more textureguitars for the
intro, and redid the acoustic guitar verses for the second time. By now
it should be usable... :) Actually, KeBu and Michael had discussed doing
this to the song already a few weeks ago, so it wasn't just Michael being
manic about the recordings.
Below a photo of Michael in his homestudio, recording the introtextures
in "Utbränd & slutkörd". Thanks to Tanja for the photo!
November 3th, 2003:
All the guitars are recorded...! Yeaaah! ;) Michael had lots of fun doing
the guitars on "Vykort från södern" on Saturday. The tracks turned out
quite relaxed and good, and the sound is also very good.
And this website has moved. Because of Tripod. Enough about that.
October 29th, 2003:
Looks like Tripod has totally violated our website by placing ads in every
single frame... It looks terrible this way, and apparently it can't be
easily solved. We'll have to think of something.
As for the recordings, Michael has started working on "Vykort från
södern", and aims at completing it next weekend. The hardest part is already
in the can, so it should be a breeze!
October 6th, 2003:
KeBu has completed the keyboards for "Några bagateller". It wasn't easy
to do the Mike Garson-style piano things and the rest, but now it's done!
So now we have the bass for 6 out of 6 songs, the guitars for 5/6 and
the keyboards for 4/6. The drums and vocals are still missing on all songs,
but we will get there, too.
October 1st, 2003:
Roger has finished the bass track for "Vykort från södern", which means
he is the first guy in the band to complete all his parts. Michael has
re-recorded one of the acoustic guitar parts in "Utbränd", just to make
it groove a little bit better. KeBu is in Trondheim right now, so he has
a break from recording. Dennis' life is very busy these days due to personal
reasons, but he'll try to find time for recording the vocals sometime...
soon.
September 22nd, 2003:
KeBu has recorded the keyboards for two songs, "Begagnat liv" and "Öppen",
and also some rough Mike Garson-influenced sketches for "Några bagateller".
Hammond, piano, Rhodes, Moog, Mellotron... those are the basic keyboard
sounds this time around. In "Öppen" KeBu has in addition to the keys also
put on some bouzouki for texture.
Michael visited KeBu last weekend, listened through the songs and
discussed the arrangements. Some different keyboard sounds were tested,
and KeBu's VST Mellotron was admired. The later the hour, the more laughs
the Mellotron's weirdest samples got - the sampled jazzband ending, with
a guy saying "Yeah!!" is just priceless!
September 9th, 2003:
Roger has now completed the bass tracks for five out of six songs. The
sixth song, written by Roger, now has a title: "Vykort från södern", and
work on that one will start soon.
So far the guitar and bass tracks sound excellent, the sonic quality
should be quite an improvement on everything the band has done previously.
August 25th, 2003:
All the guitars to five of the six Drivkraft-songs are now done, plus
a really long and weird "expressionist" guitar solo in "One Word, Three
Heard". The acoustic 12-string sound in "Öppen", which combines the Röde
Microphone and the guitar's own half-acoustic output, turned out really
nice. A few odd guitar things were added by Michael to the first half
of "Utbränd", we'll see what composer KeBu has to say about them...
During the weekend Roger recorded the bass for "Begagnat Liv",
"Några Bagateller" and "Öppen". It's his first time too working with Cubase,
and so far it has been quite pleasant although the program takes some
time getting used to.
KeBu should also have time to start working on Drivkraft this week,
and Michael has mailed him a cd with four songs to begin with... KeBu
will of course mostly record keyboards, but he'll also try some bouzouki
on "Folk är inte kloka". The Drivkraft-project is quite well on its way,
in other words!
July 18th, 2003:
Outside it's hot way beyond extreme - 34 degrees C in the shade in Turku
- but Michael is still recording things, sweating a lot. The Röde NT1-A
is now bought, and works fine. It's almost TOO sensitive, but the sound
is warm and nice and it feels good not having to sit in specifically one
position all the time when recording acoustic guitar.
"Folk är inte kloka" now has all its guitars, all the acoustic
things + a quite long, bluesy electric solo in the intro. Finally! Michael
has also added all the acoustic guitars to the last part of "Utbränd",
which actually is mostly acoustic, so that was quite a lot. Finally, a
live guiro is now also captured on "One Word, Three Heard". That was a
hard one to get tight, and it really still isn't THAT tight. But you can't
work on something like that for too long, because it will be way down
in the mix anyway. And it's an Oilfield-track, not Prime Mover, so...
July 9th, 2003:
The electric guitars for the Drivkraft-tracks "Begagnat liv", "Folk är
inte kloka" (except for a solo), "Några bagateller" and "Öppen" are done
+ a few small guitar things in "Utbränd". Most of the recordings went
well, but there were also some crazy parts that, quite logically, almost
drove Michael crazy. Let's say that "Folk är inte kloka" lives up to its
title ("People aren't sane")... ARGH.
On the weekend Michael will travel to Helsinki to go to the Tuska
festival, and he also plans to buy a new microphone, a Röde, which he
will use when adding the acoustic guitar parts. There will be quite a
lot of acoustic guitar on the cd, which is something new for the band.
6-string and 12-string.
July 3rd, 2003:
Right now recordings of our Swedish material are in progress. We have
six songs, some 40 minutes all in all:
1- Begagnat liv (Music & lyrics: Michael Karlsson)
2- "Progekalypso" - working title (Music & lyrics: Roger Nyman)
3- Folk är inte kloka (Music & lyrics: Michael Karlsson)
4- Några bagateller (Music & lyrics: Michael Karlsson)
5- Öppen (Music & lyrics: Michael Karlsson)
6- Utbränd (Music & lyrics: Sebastian Teir)
Tracks 1 & 4 are short, uptempo songs, 2 & 5 slightly more balladlike
and 3 & 6 are long prog epics. The tracklist is structured like a vinyl
with sides A and B. The name of the project is Drivkraft, which pretty
much is Prime Mover in Swedish. We hope to bring in some guest musicians
to play more unusual instruments... more about that later.
We also have a bunch of songs that are going to have lyrics in
English and that will be released under the name Prime Mover. Among the
songs is a 10+ minute really complex progressive suite that at the moment
has the title "I Know What Lies Behind", and includes the parts "The Thinking
Man", "An Exhibition of Challenging Art", "State of Denial" and "The Thinking
Man (reprise)", as well as a couple of instrumental parts that still lack
titles. Michael finished the lyrics for this suite TODAY!.
Band-related news: Sebastian, KeBu, has quit Couch because of lack
of time, and the band is now put on ice. He and Kenneth are still active
with Fat
Funk Force, though. Michael is still working on his next solo Oilfield-release,
but at the moment Drivkraft and Prime Mover are the main priorities. He
has also finished a short new song called "Den trasiga minken" for the
upcoming Men in the Moon-album ("The Revenge of the Lobotomized"). You
may or may not be able to download a rough mix of that track here.
June 24th, 2003:
The www.fi e-mail service is no longer available, which means our e-mail
address primemover@www.fi is no longer valid. You can use oilfield@hotmail.com
until we get a cool new official addy.
The latest new song is an insane thrash metal attack called "Demon
Straight from Hell", which of course will NOT ever be released officially
by Prime Mover. ;)
May 13th, 2003:
Another weekend, another rhythm guitar session. This time "One Word, Three
Heard" was done, which was a quick job, because the guitar didn't even
need to be doubled. One interesting detail about this track is that a
real guiro will be used on it... if Michael can manage to play it tight
enough. The song in itself is quite cool, with a "primitive jazz"-section
at the end. Could be used for Prime Mover, but might also be lumped in
with the Oilfield-bunch.
May 5th, 2003:
The rhythm guitars for a track bearing the working title "Lawnmower Blues"
have been recorded over the weekend. The song is a piece of basic 70's
hard rock, with a slightly eastern outro that sounds like a mixture of
acoustic Led Zeppelin and Opeth. The main riff is fun to play, but the
rest of the song isn't too spectacular. So it will probably be an Oilfield-track,
not used by Prime Mover.
April, 28th, 2003:
So what is new...? A few weeks ago Prime Mover was demoband of the week
on Radio X3M, and Michael was also interviewed. He said some weird things
about Prime Mover being music that gets better on every listen up until
the 108th one, and after that it's all downhill. Because of that Prime
Mover wouldn't play tours longer than 108 gigs. Yeah, whatever... ;)
Work on the new material is progressing nicely. Michael and Roger
are both learning to effectively use Cubase SX/SL. Michael has programmed
drums for no less than 10 songs, and also recorded the rhythm guitars
for a track called "Complication". It's a good, uptempo rock song, but
it will probably be used on the upcoming Oilfield-cd. Yes, in addition
to the Drivkraft and Prime Mover cds, and to the Men In The Moon-cd which
is still in the can, there will also be new stuff from Oilfield released
this year. How many of these collections of music that will come out in
2003 remains to be seen, but they are all coming up... Anyway, it's good
to start with Oilfield, because that means we can practice a little before
grabbing the more complicated Prime Mover-stuff.
Speaking of other projects, KeBu and Kenneth have played a gig
with Couch
at the legendary Tavastia
club in Helsinki, as support for Eva Dahlgren's project Budda Boys. Nice,
nice... Their other project, Fat Funk Force, has received a lot of praise
and attention (including "song of the week") for their
mp3:s at Mikseri.net. Check it out!
March, 10th, 2003:
Michael's computer arrived, with Cubase SL and a Delta 1010LT soundcard
installed! Oh, the joy! To celebrate this, a really long review of "Put
In Perspective" is published on our reviews-page. This review, by Stephanie
Sollow (thanks!) from Progressive World, is so long that it's got to be
the review to end all reviews of this particular release. Next time we
post a review it will be about something else!
February, 27th, 2003:
Michael ordered his new computer yesterday, and it is specially designed
for being a recording studio. Guess it will start raining new, fresh recorded
songs once it arrives... After a period when everyone has been focusing
on other things, it looks like the next Prime Mover and/or Drivkraft-thing
will actually happen soon.
Mp3.com has been rude enough to restrict the amount of songs for
non-paying artists to just three, so after having had our stuff there
for some 3-4 years we are denied most of our space. This means fewer samples
available... Oh well, guess it was time for those old "Mr Zingelmann"-songs
to fade away anyway.
Btw, half the new Men in the Moon-cd is done and mixed. Sounds
great, perfectly unlistenable! ;)