London :_(

Sorry, no post today. Hard to find anything to say on a day like this. I’m still rather shocked after the attack on London.

Anders Mildner

Junk Musik

Helena Josefsson, backing singer at AGM Studios (XI): The Swedish Dream of Doug Wyatt (IV)

Doug Wyatt has finished the recordings of his new album at AGM Studios, with the producer Christoffer Lundquist, Justin Winokur, Jens Jansson and Helena Josefsson. You can read his day-by-day notes here.

LJdM

Day 15

Midsummer's Eve. Spent the day at C’s in-laws, about an hour away. Cookies and sparkling wine. Dancing around a maypole (though oddly located outside a church, and with the maypole formed into a cross). Singing cute Swedish songs. Juice, coffee, cookies. Sunny, warm (maybe 75-80 F) and humid. Dinner: several kinds of herring, potatoes, a drinking song, Danish schnapps, northern Swedish beer, more herring, more drinking songs, more schnapps, two kinds of salmon, salad, yet more drinking songs and schnapps. Food, drink and company all great. Swedish history lesson with the help of an historical atlas. Walk down to the sea, view of the bridge connecting Malmö to Copenhagen, Copenhagen barely visible in the distance. More coffee, more cookies. It was a good break. Back to the guest house a bit after 11.

Day 16

Back at the studio, the Artiste patiently laid on the couch while the world seemed to rotate around him more viscerally than usual, and made occasional comments while Christoffer continued to outline a mix. Brought in Helena’s vocal track in places.

Day 17

So we nearly finished 3 tracks today (including one that had consumed most of yesterday). Justin had been sounding a little concerned that we weren’t going to finish in time, but Christoffer and I both expressed confidence when we talked about it.

Day 18

We got a lot done Monday, but not as much as I’d hoped. Pizza for dinner in Sjöbo. Tired. Stopped at 1:30, plan to start early in the morning. Must leave for Malmö by 9:30 am Wednesday.

Day 19

Christoffer and I both were very tired, which didn’t help, but after maybe half an hour of groaning we got everything lined up correctly. I’m going to record a bunch of tracks at home and send them to Christoffer to pick from. We did two passes of Taurus bass pedals, excited that we were almost done. Well, there are a few loose ends to clear up before Christoffer starts mixing on his own next month, but now enough of the album was in the can that we “declared victory and went home.” We had a drink, chatted, and began to pack up and clean up.

Day 20 (29 June)

Woke up at 7:45 am in rural southern Sweden. Showered, packed clothes etc., got to the studio around 8:45. Managed to get a last dose of Scandinavian salmon into my stomach, and all my stuff and a few things Justin is sending back with me into his duffel bag and my cases by 9:15. Got to the main Malmö train station around 10:45. At the Copenhagen airport around 11:30, the transition I’d been dreading—getting the luggage from the train to the SAS checkin counter, alone—went OK though my back was not happy. No interest in duty-free Danish schnapps or cookies or even cigarettes (while in Sweden I’d cut down so much that I didn’t finish the carton I’d bought in the US 3 weeks earlier). Slept much of the way to Reykjavik. Afraid that because of the delay, the connection would be terribly short and I’d have to rush, and that gear wouldn’t make the connection. Better sleep before my body realizes it is 8 am in Sweden, time to be awake.

Back in the USA (5 July)

I’ve been asked a few times how it feels to be back in the U.S. after spending three weeks in Sweden (and, briefly, Denmark). I offer this handful of random observations from the last 5 days.

In the U.S., hillbillies do not drive Volvos. In Sweden, I did not see more than a handful of SUVs. I am sure that none of them had bumper stickers reading “what’s our oil doing under their soil?”In the U.S. you can go to a massive fireworks display and barely hear a single explosion over the loud patriotic music that makes one feel one has inadvertently stumbled into a George W. Bush rally. “God bless America! Let freedom ring! Born in the USA!” Damn it, the 4th of July is about blowing things up (do you think it’s an accident that NASA chose this day to crash a spacecraft into a comet?), and BOOMs are important.

I half-awoke from a jetlag-induced nap with my album playing in my head. Didn’t want to wake up fully. When I finally did, I had some new words to describe the music. Have continued to imagine segments of two songs sharing a key center morphing into each other. For fun (or perhaps for an extra track on the record) I am making a list and will try rendering them when the mixes are done.

Doug Wyatt -

Helena Josefsson, backing singer at AGM Studios (X): The Swedish Dream of Doug Wyatt (III)

If you want to know what is doing Helena Josefsson these days, you should go here. Doug Wyatt continues the recordings of his new album at AGM Studios.

LJdM

Day 11

9 hours sleep last night. Made some progress on assembling the new arrangement for Where You Lay before starting the session. We’re close to being done with this one. 2 down, 7 to go. 7 days left. That probably means finishing 2 a day for the last 4 days, since Tuesday and Wednesday will be drum days (with Jens Jansson), the string quartet will be here Thursday afternoon, and Helena Josefsson will sing Thursday night. That seems only marginally sane yet not impossible. Justin and I liked the so-called crappy Danish roadside restaurant we went to last week so much that we went back this evening. I will suggest that I take a shot at redoing the piano track while Jens is here, either before he plays on it, or maybe even better, at the same time.

Day 12

Did the 15-20 minute walk from the guest house to the studio for the first time, enjoying the perfect weather. Jens arrived around 1; we hung out for quite awhile before getting set up to record drums. We were interrupted by a truck honking; half a ton of 2” tape had arrived from Los Angeles. Justin and I joked that we should have brought it with us since Icelandair seemed so friendly about extra baggage. Dinner at the Danish place again. The poor ancient Volvo stalled while pulling into the restaurant and after dinner I was concerned about it starting again, but it did—then stalled at the corner at the top of the first hill. We push-started it and out of paranoia I kept racing the engine to keep it from stalling once more. But a few kilometers from the studio, it began to sputter again, and I couldn’t keep it running. Possibly an alternator or battery problem. We got out. To the west, golden rays of sun were breaking through the clouds. In front of us was a grass field full of yellow wildflowers. I was reminded of descriptions of heaven by near-death experiencers. Christoffer came to rescue us. Justin and I were advocating a tow truck; Jens and Christoffer were saying no, that would cost a thousand dollars, in Sweden we tow our own cars. Indeed, Christoffer had a tow line, and I steered the Volvo as Christoffer towed us back to the studio. Towing with a line like that is illegal in the U.S. and I see why; my instincts were screaming as we followed Christoffer at probably 70+ km/hr at a distance of just a few meters. Fortunately he slowed down very gradually for the turn, because without the car running, the power brakes didn’t work. It took some time here for Jens to work out parts for the multiple sections, but he made it bigger and more aggressive than Justin or I had imagined based on the demo; somehow the real drums made the electronic percussion sound more evil and alive too.

Day 13

Today we recorded Jens Jansson playing drums. Justin Winokur took Jens back to Malmö so I had dinner with Christoffer and family. After dinner, Christoffer Lundquist took some time off. After maybe 90 minutes, Christoffer came in and started preparing the studio for the string players. Justin returned and helped Christoffer. By midnight, all the string parts were done. There was a silly episode with finding a printer driver for C’s printer. Justin and the Internet came to the rescue. The string charts were sitting in a nice pile on top of my keyboard when we left the studio at the entirely sane hour of 1 am. Tomorrow promises to be a long day—Helena Josefsson arrives to sing at 11 am, and the string quartet arrives at 5 pm. Christoffer's wife asked if I felt homesick. I thought about it and said, no. I mentioned that this area reminds me a lot of the countryside around Ithaca, where I grew up. I thought about home for the first time today when I saw that my bill payer service had received an electric bill that was a little larger than I expected. I just wondered if I’d left anything on. There are people I miss talking to, but I don’t miss my usual routine—I have my musical tools and I’m spending most of my energy making music, so what more could I wish for?

Day 14

Today was indeed a long day. Helena Josefsson came to sing a little after 11 am. First we worked on Cobblestone Mirrors, for which I’d composed an extensive vocal part the week before coming to Sweden. That part shrank a bit when we arranged the song, but it was still substantial; it’s the focal point of the song in three separate sections, one short one with 6-part harmonies, 4 of which she sang triple or quadruple-tracked (the 2 lower ones I will attempt myself, later). She was the consummate pro, needing just a few takes at the beginning to adapt to the situation before nailing most of the rest of the takes on the first try. Her voice has an unusual quality to it, and we later noticed that it bore a surprising resemblance to the vocal stack samples that I’d used when composing the parts. That song took maybe two or two and a half hours. Then we did Where You Lay, where there’s a vocal line just in the chorus (and chorus tail). That went quite quickly, slowed only a little by taking some time to arrange a part for her based on some of the synth lines. On Don’t Know I Know, I’d had an idea: there’s one tiny spot where one of the synth sounds is morphing on the fly, hits a vocal sound and then changes to something else quickly—what if that voice sound were amplified and extended? That was way too subtle. Instead Christoffer made a “vocal fishtank”, a big delay and a bit of distortion “that is unavoidable when you start chaining together lots of analog gear.” Helena just improvised over the track, never having heard it before, and there were a couple of stunningly beautiful moments. It was so good that we did another pass on the whole track and there were some more magic bits that we’ll keep. C said later that it seemed she just got inside the music, and I agreed.
Christoffer suggested that she improvise over Implications, which has some key changes in some surprising places. Since she was hearing it for the first time, it wasn’t surprising that she didn’t always hit the transitions, but on one or two she happened on a common tone between the key. There were some other really nice moments in this one too. We found one choir-like line for her to cover in Artifacts and Fantasies; that went quite quickly. Then on the spot she invented a catchy melody for Serentripidy, which we’d just opened on a whim. We weren’t sure if it takes the song in the direction we’re aiming, but it was a great effort. Helena’s singing moved me to tears at least 5 times over the course of the afternoon. I’d feared that some of the melodies in Cobblestone Mirrors (played by synths in my demos) were too simple, bordering on trite, but sung, they were completely different. I went outside for a smoke and Justin went to pick up pizza from the Danish place. Helena came out and we were still chatting when the string quartet arrived at 5 pm. Justin returned with pizza shortly thereafter, and we asked the string players to please get set up and tuned while we ate quickly. We started with Cobblestone Mirrors where the strings did something I think will mesh nicely with Helena’s vocal. It was quite a rush to hear my first string quartet arrangement played. I was a little concerned about Artifacts and Fantasies; there are a number of bizarre meter shifts that attempt to follow an improv. To add to my anxiety, we’d done something to the sequence that had made the click track out of phase; it took a few minutes to fix that. We started with the end, where the piano, cello and one of the synths are off in a world of odd-length phrases, while the violins and viola superimpose a (mostly) constant quarter-note feel. It took some time to get that section right, but the players graciously worked out phrasing and dynamics despite my charts not having any, and got increasingly comfortable and confident with the part. I was very happy when we finished that song; it sounded so big and alive. Somewhere in there I ended up in the room with the players, doing some kind of impressionistic twisting of the hands, arms and body, in ways that might conceivably assist in the performance and interpretation of the music. Some might call it conducting. I did manage a few gestures to indicate dynamics and downbeats. I was really happy with all of the string parts. Friday is a national holiday in Sweden, Midsummer’s Eve. Christoffer’s family has taken off for the weekend. We’re invited to join them for a celebration.

Doug Wyatt -

Helena Josefsson, backing singer at AGM Studios (IX): The Swedish Dream of Doug Wyatt (II)

Doug Wyatt continues the recordings of his new album at AGM Studios. Helena Josefsson will record backing vocals for this album very soon. We can read his day-by-day notes here. They are really interesting.

By the way, Justin Winokur told his friend Doug about AGM Studios and is also taking part in the recordings.


According to Anders, from Junk Musik:

"The super slick, ultra–polished, internet fashion magazine Se7en just published an editorial about Justin Winokur. If you haven’t seen it yet, you should. The writing is great. The pictures are great. And they like Junk! They ran the article about Justin Winokur on the very first page of the music section—before Weezer and Coldplay and NIN. You will find the magazine here. If you want to go directly to the part with Justin, go here.

Justin Winokur recorded his album "Thirteen songs about love" at the AGM Studio and released it in 2004.

LJdM

Day 5

Christoffer Lundquist suggested that this piece seemed to be well along its way and that we pick up another after dinner. Justin Winokur had gone to Malmö for the rest of the day, which made it best that we work on one of the pieces where we weren’t going to collectively rework the structure. I’m feeling much better about our pace now; if we continue to “launch” one song a day now, we should have everything ready for Jens Jansson to add drums on Tuesday and Wednesday next week.

Days 6-7

The last two days have gone by in a blur. Fatigue has become a factor. Whenever I’m not in the studio working, I’m finding myself keenly aware of the schedule. Jens is coming to play drums on Tuesday, and we’re taking the weekend off, so that leaves two working days. We now have 1 “finished” song that he won’t play on, 4 songs that are ready for him to play, Where You Laid (which needs some more structural work Friday) and then three more songs to prepare for him. Justin and I planned to go a music festival over the weekend but I find myself contemplating either just holing up in the guest house or going to Malmö and getting a hotel room instead. I could catch up on sleep instead of continuing or getting further into deprivation.

Day 8

I kept to myself as Christoffer finished the arrangement. Justin left for the festival around this point. We listened and made notes on this one too, and agreed that Justin Winokur should be present for any arrangement decisions and that we were too tired to go back and work on anything else; got back to the guest house just now (23:30). Tomorrow I’ll probably go visit Copenhagen, wander around the city a bit, try to put a good dent in my homework, and make sure I get a good rest. After that bit of “anger management therapy” with the chair the other night I told Christoffer that I’d found it fascinating when at the dinner table one evening his daughter had used a Swedish word that was translated for us as “shy/angry.” In English those are unrelated concepts. But I’ve had a tendency towards shyness ... and a tendency to repress and internalize anger. Then we went and looked at the “programmer or serial killer?” web site (Google knows where it is and I’m offline at the moment) and laughed a lot.

Day 9

Chris Lundquist had an engagement in Lund at 3 pm, so he picked me up at 2 and I had no trouble finding the train station after he dropped me in the old city. I got there around 3:15 and bought a ticket; there was a train to Copenhagen at 3:39 so I got a cheese sandwich and a bottle of juice. Thought I might sleep on the train, but I just watched the countryside and then the monumental bridge across the Baltic between Malmö and Copenhagen. Got to Copenhagen around 4:45, got cash in the train station, wandered around the station a bit looking for tourist information. There was a tourist office just up the street from the station where I reserved a room for the night. Spent an hour walking around looking for the hotel in vain; by the time I’d found it I’d walked on both sides of just about every nearby street. I’d forgotten how confusing many European cities’ street numbering systems can be. Took another half-hour nap. After a bit, used the “follow the crowds” algorithm for exploring a strange city without a Lonely Planet guide or equivalent. After maybe an hour of wandering, found a nice Thai restaurant and took my time for dinner. Marveled that the young waitress spoke Thai, Danish and English. Enjoyed smoking between courses of a meal (after initially thinking that I wouldn’t, out of consideration for those around me—until I realized they were all smoking.)
Wandered around some more for a couple of hours, mingling with the crowds, finally went in a bar, had a couple drinks, then returned to the hotel. One part of me is screaming “there’s so much to do; work!” and another “sleep! you’re going to need it!” Sleep wins. Hopefully I’ll get a couple hours in the morning to work over coffee before noon checkout time, then have some time to explore Copenhagen a bit more before returning to Sjöbo by train and bus. And theoretically, having gone through the new arrangement in my mind so much today should make it easy to start dragging notes around when I get back to the guest house tomorrow night.

Day 10

It was gorgeous day in Copenhagen, sunny, temperatures around 75 with an occasional cool breeze coming in from the sea. Took off walking around the city, this time with a bit more premeditation based on a map. Followed the crowds through the new harbor district and along the harbor up to the famous mermaid statue. Walked through an old fortified castle surrounded by a moat, with houses dating probably back to the 1700's inside, then back to the train station around 3:15 pm.
Missed one every-20-minute train to Malmö by not being able to figure out the automated ticket machine. It didn’t like my Visa card. Went to the ticket office counter instead, which let me pay cash, and have time to exchange remaining Danish crowns for Swedish ones. Missed another train when it mysteriously didn’t appear on the platform the signs had said it would (train to Hamburg was there instead). Got to Malmö around 4:40 pm. Indulged in a Burger King veggie burger. Spent 30 minutes trying to get information about buses to Sjöbo—the woman in the tourist information office didn’t know, the woman at the train ticket office didn’t know, a few locals buying bus tickets from the automated machine didn’t know, and the regional bus departure monitor said nothing about Sjöbo or any cities I knew to be in that general direction. Finally I found a policeman (or transit official?) and he told me I had to take a city bus to a bus depot. Got there around 5:45.
Ah, there was the schedule to Sjöbo. Last departure 18:30, whew. Uh oh, it says Montag-Fretag. No Lördtag schedule as with some of the other buses (and if Montag-Fretag are Monday to Friday, and Lördtag is Sunday, what is Saturday?). I appeared to be stuck in Malmö. I called Justin Winokur, who was driving back from the festival. He was willing to come get me but first suggested I make some other calls. Called Jens Jansson and Magnus, who live in Malmö. No answer. Called Christoffer’s house. No answer. Magnus called back. He was out of town. Tried Jens again and got through. He made sure I was at the right bus depot and said, no problem, just take bus 176 to Sjöbo. I was happy and thankful when I hung up, but then I looked at the schedule again to see how I’d misread it. Bus 176 was the one that ran Montag-Fretag only! Indeed, the departure monitor for the next hour (18:15 to 19:15) did not include bus 176. Called Justin, who was closer to Malmö than he’d thought and would divert to come get me. Went back to the central train station.
From a bit outside the city, Justin just followed the train tracks to find the station, arriving around 7:30. Splurged on sushi and tiramisu. (Justin decoded the dinner bill and determined that sales tax is 25%. Ouch.) I drove us back to the guest house, finally arriving a little after 11. Today it seems the “I’ll figure it out as I go” travel planning method works better in cities than in getting between them.

Doug Wyatt -

Helena Josefsson, backing singer at AGM Studios (VIII): The Swedish Dream of Doug Wyatt (I)

Doug Wyatt, the musician from New Orleans, has flied to Sweden in order to record his new album at Chris Lundquist's Aerosol Grey Machine Studio. Helena Josefsson will record backing vocals for this album. We can read his day-by-day notes here.

LJdM

Day 0

Despite Justin Winokur never before having been charged for excess baggage, we’d agreed that we would pack as if we were going to. Justin dropped me and the luggage outside the international terminal at SFO, returned the rented minivan, and reappeared 12 minutes later. Shuttled the bags to a spot near Icelandair’s checkin counter. I got perhaps 4 or 5 solid hours of sleep on the plane. We arrived Copenhagen without Justin’s clothes. Major endeavor getting all the gear onto train to Malmö. Fortunately two friends of Justin’s had met our plane and helped. Just a little under 24 hours after meeting Justin outside my apartment, we arrived at the studio guest house. Fell asleep quickly.

Day 1

Got 5.5 hrs sleep Thu. night, at the right time. Optimistic about adapting to time change. AM: Got cash, food, gas (43 liters=11.4 gallons, 476KR=US$64, $5.60/gallon!). A steady diet of salmon, cheese, bread, mustard, and herring? Yum! Hit it off well with Christoffer Lundquist—major common musical influence: Genesis’ A Trick of the Tail. PM: Listened to all 9 tracks and discussed arrangements. Considering major surgery (simplification) on perhaps 3. There’s some healthy diversity of opinion but we seem to be agreeing on the big things. Jens Jansson(drummer) arrived around 4 and listened with us. After dinner, set up to record drums. Moved Logic session onto Christoffer’s G5. Slaving mac to 24 track was working well (that day :-/). Set up keyboard rig in control room. Recorded drums and some percussion for Implications.

Day 2

Got to the studio around noon. Practiced piano while Justin and Christoffer had lunch, then told them I wasn’t really ready to perform Cobblestone Mirrors that day. Christoffer suggested Artifacts and Fantasies instead, which made me happy because it’s the one piece I’d been practicing a lot on piano in the last week. By dinnertime we’d gotten the first half of Artifacts and Fantasies rearranged, adding a reprise of the opening theme. Then Christoffer, Justin and I doubled the chords under the theme with 4 layers of 3 “monks” singing 2 parts, and Christoffer replaced my bass track with the real thing. Christoffer experimented with microphone positions for awhile and ended up capturing a glorious, sweet, singing tone.

Day 3

Now it seems we have a solid workflow going forward. We talked about it before breaking for dinner and agreed, it’s kind of inevitable that whenever you bring prerecorded material to a session, there’s going to be a certain amount of time spent just figuring out how best to integrate it. It’s not the kind of thing that’s easily planned, especially when we hadn’t worked together before and had no idea of how the other worked. On the way back from dinner I noticed a Swedish flag on someone’s house and remarked to Justin, do you think that in Sweden, flying the national flag has the same jingoistic, nationalistic connotations as it does in the U.S.? He laughed because he’d been wondering the same thing on our drive to town the other day (as had I). He said, the Swedes might have as much of a nationalistic streak as we do, but it’s for different principles; great concern for the environment, social welfare, etc. I said, maybe I will plaster my car with Swedish flags.

Day 4

After dinner, we took some publicity photos in the studio and then got down to the business of replacing the digital piano track. The one other overdub we did was Christoffer playing a low note on a bass ocarina (?!) that added a really nice organic quality to the ending. I’ll have to come back and finish in the fall. But it’s natural for things to move more slowly at the beginning before everyone’s sure of what they’re doing.

Doug Wyatt -

Helena Josefsson, backing singer at Malmö's studios (IV): Fredo - Smack

Fredo is the solo project by Mitsunori Matsuno from Tokyo. He's the resident DJ and the organizer of one of the highly popular party in Tokyo "Freaky!" at Shinjuku Oto. He made a successful debut with the limited first single "Square" in October 2003 and the song from this single titled "Fantastic Festa!" made waves in the clubs across Japan.

Fredo makes dance music with a mixture sound of house, breakbeats, hiphop, rock, electro-disco and so on. His music is also pop, catchy and melodious, and can be accepted also by indie-pop/rock fans. The first full length album, Smack which was produced by Tatsuki Hasimoto (Strauss) is out in June 2005. According to himself, listening to the debut album means that you will experience the cutting-edge sound of the daily pop / club culture in Tokyo. This album features Bastian (Dutch track maker/producer) and Helena Josefsson (Swedish singer from Sandy Mouche). Helena sings in the song Teenage Monster.

LJdM