twentyeighth

I'm getting more and more curious, if the next record should be recorded only with low-cost equipment and have only acoustic instruments in it. In my head it sounds awfully tempting. In fact the bass is the only instrument that does have the acoustic addition of itself. In my neighborhood, I mean. So I'd need to ask some of my friends (Jani!?) to either play or borrow me the bass. Anyhow, at the moment, I feel more and more sure about the fact that the next album must have more live-play on it. How to accomplish that one is the question. The songs are anyway on the road, heading towards my head and fingers, toes and mouth.

The other thing is the recording equipment. I am really pleased on my Boss Micro-BR. And my studio will be more than ready for processing the recorded tracks, even though it is not there yet (and that story is covered elsewhere, outside THIS Post). But the microphones seem to be the hardest ones to find. Getting them should be rather easy, after I know what I want :D.
Luckily, internet is filled with brilliant instructions from microphone placement to final mixdown. Plus the reviews and the recommentations, without them it would be rather impossible to pick the right one for the right purpose. One has to bear in mind though, that the acoustic guitars in previous album (Amonpolis I) were completely recorded through Micro BR, only small effecting was added afterwards.

Finally, I don't think that nowadays it is the equipment that makes the difference, I still think that it is the song itself that counts. I at least certainly hope so! For me it seems to be more like that, actually, if the music I'm listening to is too sharp and shining without any 'errors' in the album, it's not interesting anyway. It more or less stays in the safe path then and does not explore or challenge the huge possibilities of human mind. What I mean that if you push yourself towards your boudaries, the more likely you are about to make mistakes, at least in the beginning of the boundary hunting. In the end, you'll find other boundaries and get familiar with the old ones. If you avoid risks and over the limit playing, you'll easily end up sounding boring, if you're note careful.

twentyseventh (UPDATED!!)

It has been awhile since ther has been any GOOD bloggings here, so I just might try. To put at least something here.

About the album (Amonpolis I):
The album is so called theme-album. All the songs are related to each others, at least from my perspective. There is a continuity in the line of the tonal space and the lyrics. I have tried, in finnish of course, to have a bunch of blurred images about a paraller reality and being an outsider from the community. I might have been also accessing it. You'll never know. But, if you understand finnish, feel free to make your own translations on to the songs. I'm not here to tell you how to deal with them. You may like them, or not. The songs might speak to you in whole different way that I ment (like I did have a meaning there, then!? ;), or then again, might not. Nobody has to even like or dislike the tunes,songs, låtar, whatever you will call them, suits me fine. The title of the album is the place in my imaginary science fiction universe. Somewhere in the future, near or far, doesn't matter, actually.
Anyway I feel that I have achieved to critisize the present world (in Finland) and the way people are treating each others and being treated by. At least partly. The songs are not stories, not even short ones, more or less they are observations and short captures of thoughts or visions of the time and place inside the observers mind.

About the band (Incredible Jens):
Actually, there is no band. The name is a good one (Thanks to Josefiina Råtta for that and for the Cover!), at least from my point of view. Mainly the production, mixing and recording is done by yours truly, except visiting Bass- and drumtracks. The Bass in 'Tanssii vartalon kanssa' is recorded and played by Kimmo Pekari, and in track 'Ulkona?!' the bass was recorded and played by Pekka Uuranne (from a finnish metal -band Kara). Most of the acoustic drum parts are recorded and played by Mika Hiironniemi (From a marvellous progressive rock -band Margin Of Safety). Mika also helped a LOT during the mixdown process by giving hints and suggestions (Lift the Vocals UP), as did the others as well. Tommi Hilli (former vocalist from Varasteleva Puutarhakääpiö and nowadays a present vocalist of Loppukevennys) did the vocal track in Tanssii vartalon kanssa. Veikko played drums four years ago for 'Ulkona?!', with my former band, murske. Mikko Ojala played drums, Jani Pulkki guitar and Heikki Ahonen bass on song 'kuravettä'.

So, all the rest is done by me, myself and the dude I call myself to be. Arrangements are mostly from my head, except the C-part and closing part of 'Posetiivi' which is more or less taken from the sessions with Varasteleva Puutarhakääpiö, so thanks to Lauri, Timo, Olli and Tommi for that one too. So all the complains should be addressed to yours truly. Or then the good points, too. If you can spot them out :D.


And, NOW, its's time to really start to get the next album lineup sorted out. Hopefully Stockholm is filled with open -minded anarchistic rockbottocks :D. I am anyway missing playing with people. The style of the forthcoming music is completely uncertain, and will remain it, until the lineup has been found. I have this idea about the music that it should be more than the sum of the minds that are connecting and doing it. And that the style and sound of the band will be found only through playing. But we'll see that one, too. I know the album is filled with more or less progressive and at least alternative music. The next one might be something completely different.

Feel free to contact.

BTW.
Am I the only one who gets a scitchofrenic feeling writing about Blog-posts in english for a band who's songs are in finnish?

twentysixth

Incredible Jens has stood out from the closet of the closets. He can now officially be found from myspace.
http://www.myspace.com/incrediblejens


BTW, my opinion about the myspace is not too positive. This stupid multisocialising network hassle which actually teaches people to hide their true feelings and interract more and more with people who are so called friends. blah :D

twentyfifth

The world wide web has once again lifted up something really good. What I mean here is the hippie/punk/whatever -alternative DIY-attitude. The web gives you the opportunity to be your own record label, publisher and what evere you want to be. And that is definitely worth using, then. I myself find it way more interesting to create music, lyrics, literature (on the way, I hope ;) or whatever I want to and put it on the web. Not to mention the fact that nobody will ever listen or read them anyway, besides the friends of course ;).
I've ran into few problems, still. Since I am not a professional, I might be doing things in a way that prevent them to be found. Which, in the other hand, might be a blessing to the humankind. And the other is related to this. How to publish anything in the web without letting the published item to be rambled down by the zillions of other publications. And more, what makes my publication so important that anybody should see it. Once again, nothing. And that is a good thing, I hope.
Anyhow, this whole DIY-stuff (Opensource & Creative Commons) have been leading me towards a decision that I made a couple of weeks ago. Finally. I've been doing it without an official announcement for some time, still. Further on, I will record and deliver my music, lyrics or whatever I produce with open source -tools. From head to toe. Since now, the latest record was mixed down with commercial and not so official audio software.
About the publications. The final and ultimate essence of music or any art is freedom. The music I create should be free, since it is that for me, who am I to deny anybody for getting (hopefully) the same feeling of freedom to themselves. And that is the baseline for my publications. The gigs, if I some day get a band together, are a different story, and have to be dealed later on, when time comes. But the music itself should be free.


Free your mind. :D

kahdeskymmenesneljäs - twentyfourth

Ja levy on siis ladattavissa ja kuunneltavissa myös tästä blogista. Tuossa vasemmalla on player. Kai se jotain plugineja vaatii toimiakseen, ei jaksa kaivaa tietoa esille. Jos ei toimi, niin sen saa silti ladattua täältä: http://www.jamendo.com/en/album/21401

As you might know, the album is downloadable and you can also listen to it from the left side widget. It might need some plugins to work, but at the moment I'm way too lazy to check what. If it won't work, the link above does.

kaksikymmentäkolmas - twentythird

Pienoinen päivitys. Levyä prosessoidaan edelleen. Voisihan toki ranskanmaalle vinkata, että sen enkoodauksen voi toteuttaa myös tietokoneella, luulisin.

Levy on ladattavissa Jamendosta. Jos ei nyt, niin hyvinkin pikapuoliin. Ainakin se nyt on sinne uploadattu ja paraikaa prosessoitavana. Kannesta saamme kiittää Josefiina Råttaa. Muilta osin kiitokset ansaitsevat yksilöt mainitaan sekä kotisivuilla, että Jamendossa. Joka ikinen, joka tätä on ollut työstämässä, auttamassa, henkisenä tukena ja kriittisenä korvaparina sekä potentiaalisena kohdeyleisön jäsenenä ansaitsee myös sen kunniamaininnan.

tämänpäiväisen blogauksen otsikosta on kiittäminen 1980-luvun suomalaista urheiluselostajistoa.

Record is now uploaded and soon able to be downloaded from: http://www.jamendo.com/artist/Incredible_Jens.
Someone might say to the French (Jamendo is originally from France) that the encoding could be done also with computer ;). The album has been under processing until last night or so...

twentysecond

Incredible Jens has found something nice:

Incredible Hulk: Not An Origin Story

Jens don't feel and hopefully not look like Hulk does, even though both are highly unpredicably Incredible species of human kind. Like every single other person is.
Usually we just cover it up and tend to mirror the expectations we think the other people in our social network have for ourselves. Usually they don't expect you to be anything else than you are. At least not in my neighborhood of friends. I hope ;)
And I seriously recommend anybody in a position where the social environment is telling you what to do to reconsider your limits of friendship anyhow.

And what does this have to do with Hulk? I guess we just should accept him as he is and not expect him to behave like every other dude in the galaxy. Tolerate and encourage to peace and harmony and other ugly hippie -shit :D.

twentyfirst

All you web-addicted persons in there and in here, the following link points to a source of an interesting idea. The addiction to web and new info we receive from there might be inside us all due to a built-in mechanism in human mind.

Portals - WSJ.com

The author claims that like cats are addicted to hunt for moving objects, e.g. laserspot from the laserpen, we are addicted to explore new things. And he might not be wrong. I find myself continuously more interested in new things than doing the same stuff every day. The more I actually use my brain or my body to get to attached to new experiences, the more I feel fresh and able to explore some more. And, with internet, some days are more addicted than the others. Keep on reading the RSS-feeds over and over again, check the email once every three minutes. Write a blog entry daily and wonder why there's no comments or even readers with them ;).

twentieth

Official Google Blog: How Google keeps your information secure

sort of a relief. strange, though, that they have released this information just yesterday, when I created my blog-entry :D. Getting even more paranoid at the moment? Actually, I'll have to read it through much more carefully before saying anything...

To be honest, I don't hink I could've been the only one to think such thoughts. I think that as long as there is thinking human beings living in a somewhat similar social context, the focus of minds can easily be set to same targets. I've seen it happening between my lyrics and other artist's lyrics, too. At least I've been handling similar issues and thinking same things than somebody else. The world is small, and thanks to Google, it gets even smaller :D.

nineteenth

How much will we leave marks on the world from ourselves? To the nature we'll leave a bunch of constant human-trademarks in the form of plastic bags, nuclear waste etc. In the web, then, we can easily leave even more traces of ourselves. It seems that, in case you are not careful, you can really loose (or gain) your reputation out there. Or here, by the way :D.
Has anybody been tracking down the environmental cost of our everyday internet-usage? How much do the invisible servers consume energy? I bet that the amount of consumed energy in these machines of lousy software is increasing second by second.
And the other thing in web is the visual traces we leave from ourselves. How can we be sure that the data left behind is not misused? By who, you might ask. By anybody who gets the profit out of it I say.
The marketing profiler companies, the merchandise marketers, at least. For example; this Blog is written on a platform owned by Google, which is by far the best internet -based company ever. It also has, as a company, really powerful ways of exploring the user statistics and (as I suspect) the user data inside all the millions/billions user accounts across the world. It's not saying this too loud, but it has tailored the search engine for China, in a way to restrict non-chinese-way of searching the web. The other word for this is definitely a censorship. which is never a good thing. So my question is, will Google serve other countries in other ways as well. It could, quite easily, provide use statistics and search cpabilities for U.S.A, which is not (and has not been) the number one in human rights following what comes to national security guarding. I'm not saying that Google does it, not that government of U.S.A (or whatever the country is) would do it, but that there's a possibility for google to provide such service to it's customers. I don't think they do act that way, if I got it right, they have been declining on such actions. But what about Microsoft, AOL and yahoo, then? Or the not-so-friendly criminal organisations, or terrorists?
My point in here might be (not quite sure about it ;) that people should think of what they provide of themselves in the web and with who they share that info. But it is like in normal world, I'm not telling my personal history to a bunch of unkown co-travellers in the subway. Like they say: Just because you're paranoid, don't mean nobodys watching.

And for a relief (is it?) to me and anybody who happens to be reading this. Who cares about me in the web anyway? Some people tend to think that they and their thoughts or actions are so important that their personal data can be used, as it is, against them by some big governmental player. From my point of view, the most of the data in the web can and will be, in the future - if not now, used as a merchandise targeting material for companies who want to make profit. Because that is the way for companies to keep on growing. At any cost, if you check the global players in any market sector.

eighteenth

after careful listening, there's now TWO Songs available for download in the homepages.

Incredible Jens

Please download, listen and comment here!!!

seventeeth

Hack Attack: Firefox and the art of keyword bookmarking

A neat trick indeed. In case you are too lazy to write more than two letters :D.

sixteenth

And just to keep you and everybody else informed, I'll try to add something in here. Even today, although there's not much going on inside my brain. Yet. Anyway, there's actually a need to modify at least 2 songs still, before the final release of the album. And the album cover and sleeve are ordered from the artist herself, we'll see what we'll get :D

fifteenth

it has been an interesting day. truly. thanks to the friends in this hyperspace and my beloved wife.

fourteenth

I want to sell my records. Meaning the ones I've created. And to be honest, meaning the only real one I've almost got done ;). But I'm not prepared to sell it at any cost. That's for sure. I mean that I want to give it away as free. Music by it's best forms is representing freedom, and it should remain so as it's essence, too.

Nowadays the music sold by the big companies is more or less boring. The small labels are following them or doing the opposite, which is kind of following, too :D. The artists are more or less hit-factory products. Idols, celebrity wannabees etc. For me at least. Of course there's always few brilliant exceptions, which at least keeps me interested. But the whole situation is boring. And while watching the latest record -sales figures it seems that I'm not alone here. While big major label artist sales are going down, the small labels and independent music shops (and industry, I certainly hope so!!) is going more or less the same way it has been. Nowadays I can download all the major label artist discographies with the videos and lyrics from the web. So why should I bother paying for that then? The independent stuff is harder to find as 'free', so it means that I should go to the shops to by it, borrow it from the friends or go to the library, like I used to do earlier on.
Now, the big label record companies are trying to fight against the situation, which from my point of view is stupid, completely. They're pushing the already freely available stuff online with a price tag. Even though the price tag is tiny, 1 EUR, 99 cents etc. It's more than the one you'll have to pay when downloading the torrent from e.g. Piratebay.
At the same time, the record labels are cutting down the costs and signing only the artists that have a good product potentiality. At least that's how I see it.
From my point of view, the record companies are falling back, taking blind Goliath-steps slowly towards random directions while the little Davids are surviving and becoming the kings. For how long, you'll never know.
My point here is, that the record companies should drop the records and start to sell services. To the artists themselves. And then again, to the customers also. If I was a big record company, I'd buy or made a contract with an open Creative Commons -internet community, leave it be and try to sell the services I could to the best and most popular acts on the community. Meanwhile, on other, old-fashioned venues, I would continue producing celebrity-whores for everyday soap-opera purposes. There's always a crowd for brainless nonsence. I know, I watch the AFV. And I would stop cutting the costs and concentrate on the issue that the money I make has to be enough to pay the costs. If it was something more, good. But then again, I'm not a business man, nor I'm a record label multicultural business machine. I've seen few, though :D

thirteenth

Do I consider myself as a bad person if I download music from the internet? No I don't, surprise!?
I grew up in finland, in a middle-class suburb, went to average middle-class schools and did (in 70's standards) average middle-class boy stuff with my friends. One of the things was to buy C-cassettes, go to my friend's home, since he had a record player (and Stereo/HiFi-VCR & Videogame & C64 - I did not :D). I used to get the albums recorded to my cassettes (TDK is still up and running). The albums my friend or his family had or the ones I borrowed from the local public library. The libraries, btw, are one of the most important things available. Hopefully they stay free of charge everywhere! Back then I used to have quite broad taste of music, at least thinking about t now, from Dire Straits to Hanoi Rocks plus everything else in the middle and both sides ;). Since nobody told me what was cool to listen and what was not. And, thanks to my friends, it was a serious fun to sit in a darkened living room and fall in to the musical world of Love Over Gold. Or to the finnish broadcast company (YLE) version of Hitchhikers Guide to Galaxy. Doesn't happen too often nowadays. The actual musical experience is lost between zillions of distractions. And the music is the background noice everywhere. For me it's kind of sad to loose the actual meaning of the music that way. Does it make Live-music more valuable, I think it does. And me, myself, I fill my working days background with music, definitely.
But the whole point in here was the thing that I haven't been paying for my music before, mainly. Other than that, the fact that if you can get something for free from the web, why shouldn't you take it? So it is ok.
Or at least partly. Of course I would be more attached to the music, if I would have to do at least something for it, like walk to the library, borrow a CD and then rip it at home after I've been listening weither it's ok or not. Nowadays the music is so easy to get that you just do it, constantly, without paying too much attentition to it at all. So getting the music has fallen in to the same slot of background noice than the music itself. Sort of greedy mix between laziness and hoarding...
And no, I'm not concidering myself being a better man while doing this. Not at all. The whole society is so easy nowadays, that you can just slip downstream with everybody else without paying attention to anything. And there's the value for myself being tested. Do I have enough will power to create some countermovement actions to my personal life to fight against the boring life inside this world? (London's Burning with boredom now). To activate myself to actally DO something for the things I'm keen to and not just wait for them to swim in my Net-For-The-Torrents :D.

And after all, I'm still not the right guy to judge am I good or bad...

twelfth

It was snowing this morning. Here in Stockholm, in the middle of winter, weird? For me, the weirdest thing about this winter is the thing that there is no snow constantly. The snow from this morning has almost melted away now. Yippee?
When I was younger, let's say something like 15 years younger than now, I lived in Helsinki (Capital of Finland) and still I can remember that winters back then used to be colder and there was snow in March almost to my hips. And when I was even younger , there was more snow constantly from the end of october until beginning of april.
Now I'm not sure about situation in Finland, but if I got it right there's not too much snow in the southern parts of Finland. In the north, if I got it right, there is snow, but the amount of it is much less than it used to be.
And the main thing of all this is, that will it make me a better person (compared to who? Why compare...) if I think about this sort of sad issues and still drive to work alone in my car. Being alone does not bother me (I'm a Finn ;) but polluting does. Even still:

Just think, don't act.

Is that enough for you? For me it certainly is not.

eleventh

the last song that needed the tweaking, metsä (forest for the foreigners ;) has hopefully been finalized now. I'll have to give it a break and try it tomorrow, not today anymore.

the cover is also waiting to be done, among the inner sleeve ;)