Awesome FEMME II 2015

Around last January, we were invited to FEMME II festival 2015 in Eindhoven. This was very nice news, as we were a bit let down at that moment, as just 1-2 months before we were forced to cancel our attendance to a big European tour with a very well-known metal band. This cancellation was due to lour own logistic reasons and impossible time schedule.

On the early hours of 16th October, we flew to Amsterdam. Finnair allowed me to bring my extra guitar inside the cabin, which was pleasant. Sometimes, this is not possible and in those cases it usually means extra payment for extra luggage. From Amsterdam we took a morning train to Eindhoven through beautiful Dutch pastoral landscape.

Pic 1: Where's the train? Please, look after your luggage...

Because of the time difference, we arrived to the city main station very early and started looking for our accommodation.Soon, we had found our bed and breakfast place, De Xtra Mijl (is this a typical dutch name?), at the suburban Eindhoven, around 2 kilometres from the center of the city. What a treat, a couple of rooms were reserved for us at the home of a very nice and happy elder couple. We were treated like royal people with amazing breakfasts and there was also a very beautiful Rembrandt-ish park nearby.

Pic 2: Autumn colours in Eindhoven.

What was pretty odd in Eindhoven, was that a taxi was here much cheaper than a ticket in a public transportation vehicle. Of course, travelling with all the music gear was also very much more convenient with taxi. To our amusement, at least two taxi drivers recognized our band and we actually got one free ride by giving the driver our cd!

Because our slot was put on Saturday, we could relax the Friday and enjoy the atmosphere of Effenaar, the huge concert venue. There were many interesting quality bands to check. Lacuna Coil was very impressive, for me, this was the first time to see them playing live.

We had to get up pretty early on Saturday morning. There was a morning(!) soundcheck ahead, as we were the opening band on the Saturday bill. From the technical point of view, things could not have been better. The backline was great, the hall and the stage were really great and the in-house technicians were top professionals, special thanks to Miriam Gramsbergen, who was leading the production. 

The time ran very quickly during the day and soon we realised that it's only 20 minutes to our slot. And it was only 1 p.m.! We were lucky to share our dressing room with Karmaflow and Therion, so we could have very relaxed time with the guys before our show.

Pic 2: Besides the bass in Therion, Nalle was also a professional in Finnish swear words.

Soon we took the elevator down to the stage level and started killing the final minutes. Intro tape (Awen) started and we walked to the stage - the hall was filled already now, there were people even in the balconies, unbeliavable. Well, we could only give our best shot. We played the following songs:

The sound at the stage was perfect and the audience was just great. We enjoyed every second of the gig, the only bad thing was that the 40 minutes at stage was over too soon!

After our show, we had to ran to the merchandise area, as were kindly provided with a sales table at the main hall. It was great to meet many of the people at our show, we also sold a high number of cd's and t-shirts. The rest of the evening was superb, we could check Stream of Passion (with whom we played in the Netherlands 1 year ago), Therion, Tristania, the Gentle Storm and many other great bands. And of course we want to thank here Ton Dekkers, the festival organiser, he is the brilliant mastermind behind the whole festival. Buy him a drink, wherever you see him.

Harri / UNSHINE

The fourth of UNSHINE: Part 3

Studio has been reserved! We start with the drum recordings on the 12th May.

This means that we are going to have only two more full new album rehearsals at Kaapelitehdas.

To increase some pressure, we decided yesterday to record also a cover song. Let's see if it will appear on the album...

Things are heating up!

Harri / UNSHINE

The fourth of UNSHINE: Part 2

A very laborius period of work now in the holy grove of UNSHINE. The songs for the 4th album are basically ready - they are in their final demo form now what comes to all instruments and main vocals. However, little things matter - we rehearse now a lot in order to finalise all the details in instrumentation, this way everyone of us can bring their own views and perspectives. As the main composer of the band, I sometimes get stuck on details and can't see the forest from the trees.

Our drummer Stibe has a lot of work in arranging his parts. The drum demos I've done at Studio Churchboat are very basic and they are meant to give just the general idea of the percussions. It's probable that we will use two kinds of drum settings this time, one set-up for more acoustic performance and one for regular metal set-up.







Winter in Finland is very colourful, at least 50 shades of grey.







My guitar gear at the rehearsals.



This album has been created by making various kinds of demo and practice tapes. Nothing beats, however, the most ancient demo tape method - create the tune in your own head and if it's a good one, it'll stick there as an earworm. I've used this method for ages. Plus your inner studio follows everywhere you go.

From the most primeval versions to the final demos, all songs were first recorded this time with Apple's Garageband (instead of ProTools which I have used before). I have had GB as a free version in our studio mac and I actually discovered it only about two years ago - if I only could have heards about it before it would have saved some nerves in the previous albums. I think it's the most practical tool for musicians flooding with ideas and it fits well for making even very advanced demos. Before the actual recording we use lots of quickly produced rehearse tapes, like tapes with click and synth, but also tapes with demo drums and the whole band. GB is ideal for this kind of production.

In fact, I've loaded most of the forthcoming songs to a secret YouTube -channel, which is public only for us in the band...

Harri / UNSHINE

The fourth of UNSHINE: Part 1

It's time for the new UNSHINE album.

The previous one, Dark Half Rising, the thematical record from the time of Gallic wars was our first international release and we experienced many new things with it. Thanks for the response. We were actually very satisfied especially with the work of Massacre Records, they made a huge effort to improve our visibility.

We have left the misty mountains of Ardennes now, the tribes there are living a new, much more peaceful and more stable period of life. Farmers are busy with their seasonal work, children are playing in the fields and the arch druid is interpreting the secrets of nature in a remote grove. Time of Caesar is over and the smoke of the bonefires is withering into the winds.

We are somewhere, in a nameless and a timeless landscape, between the worlds, observing nature's signs in the current season.

It's time to travel in the otherworld.

The song writing for the 4th UNSHINE album started during autumn 2013. It was all started literally from the scratch. I decided to write some riffs just off the top of my head - music that would pour out of stream of unconsiousness without any effort. Quite soon, the first song was built very quickly around the first riff that I had developed with my electric guitar. As a results of this new style of songwriting (to me), I noticed that these songs had an odd flavour of new type of gloominess in them. The first demos were very simple, but they were also pretty attractive and primitive, in some strange way. I felt that this was a very good start, it set a way how to do things this time.

Some of the songs were left in their very primal state and they are resting and waiting for the light of day (which may or may not come). Some of them got somehow dragged along during the year - I had an urge to return to them from time to time (a good sign!) and they gradually ended to the final demo stage.

By the end year 2014, I had finally around 25 songs more or less ready, which is most definitely, the highest amount of pre-produced songs in our history.

But as said, it all starts from here. When giving a new start, you have to throw all your prejudices and expectations into the fire and see what comes out of it.

Harri / UNSHINE

Spring Equinox greetings

Dear druidettes and druids, it's been a while since we've posted here, so now at the time of Spring Equinox 2014, is time to make a change. We want to thank you all for the love, trust and great feedback you have given to us after the 'Dark Half Rising' release in August 2013. This means a LOT to us.

Right now, we are looking for the forthcoming gigs, which have been cofirmed at least to Russia, Estonia and Finland during the spring. We are also waiting for confirmations from some other very interesting places. Come to say hello at our gigs!

Also, we are very grateful both for our record company, Massacre Records and to the lovely people of Armada Agency, Wietze and Nanette. In Finland, we have received received massive help both from Mega Kuusinen, in promotional sense, and from Örkki Yrlund, in visual sense, not forgetting the other people we do not list here. Also we'd like to mention the great tour in Finland we made during last autumn with the most pleasant fellow bands, especially Teardown and all the others, thanks guys!

And last but not the least, we are already very much looking forward to the next record and period in our history. In fact, it's already on the process, number of songs have been written and we've been banging our heads to them at our rehearsal chamber. Epic stuff? Yes, more than epic...epicer!!



Cheers, and now, let's dance around the stone circles or whatever you do for the honour of spring!!!.

Susanna, Harri, Jari, Teemu and Stibe

Mastering day

On the 28th of November morning I headed to audio mastering studio of Chartmakers in the center of Helsinki. As usual, I arrived too early and as it was horribly cold and windy morning spent almost one hour reading music magazines in a local library. The librarian was a nice person as he played Jethro Tull as a quiet background music(!).

At 10 o'clock I stepped in to the (always) friendly and cosy atmosphere of the studio. Stibe was already there and Jartsa and Teemal joined us later on. Svante Forsbäck came soon and said apologies because we had to wait few minutes before he had finished one earlier Rammstein-related work (cool!).

Svante has mastered our two first albums too and he knew soon what to do with the mix we brought. Most of the work done by masterers is like magic - something is done and miracles happen while an average band player does not have any kind of idea what's happening.

In the final mix of Dark Half Rising, Svante had to do some work with low frequencies which were a bit unbalanced. It was also nice to hear that the most spikiest parts in the frequencies vanished.

The session was ready just before 4 p.m. Next: The files will go to Massacre Records who will start the work with the production and promotion.

Harri

Pea Island photo session

On last Saturday afternoon we had a photo session for 'Dark Half Rising'. The dark half had risen indeed, it's November and during this time of year Helsinki is sinking to dark which is darker than darkness.

Before the actual session we gathered at Jartsa's home, where our talented make-up artists Kirsi-Marja and Riikka (thanks girls!) had a tough job putting us make-up. See, some guys at Unshine need a lot of pink powder before they can be brought in to light. Nice session took some time and we killed time by watching Rammstein DVD and having one or two glasses of cardbox red wine. The make-up girls told us not to drink too much of it, as the heat generated by alc..something turns cheeks red and we definitely did not want to look like Snow White and 4 giant red-nose dwarfs.

After two hours we took a taxi to Hernesaari (free translation: Pea island), where photo studio of Valtteri Hirvonen was waiting. The place is quite odd, it's otherwise quite quiet harbour area, but it has also pier for cruiser ships to Estonia & Russia. The big boats shined on the other side of the bay. It was pretty atmospheric.

Valtteri was the man who took also the band photos for our last album, so he knew what to expect. The photo session went very smoothly, Valtteri is a real professional and the whole shooting went very efficiently thanks to him plus again to Kirsi-Marja who took care of the make-up etc.

Check out our FB and Flickr pages for the pictures, the actual studio pics will be naturally released as the album comes out. Cheers!