TagJean and the Mean Machine

Songwriting on the West Coast

Last week, me and the rest of Tiny Union rented a car and drove out to the west coast of Sweden. We stayed at Bella’s parents’ place on the island of Orust, and used her dad’s newly built studio as our base. We had a great time there and wrote five or six new songs in three days. Bella unfortunately had a terribly cold the whole time there, which eventually spread to Gustav and myself…so I’m trying to recover from that as I write this.

Next week I will wrap up the process of producing music for the Nobel Creations exhibition at the Nobel Museum in Stockholm. The music is pretty much finished by now, so what I have left to do now is to cut it up into smaller chunks of audio, sort of disassembling the puzzle if you will, export those files and then focus on getting the programming right so that everything plays the way it’s supposed to. My teacher and super hero programmer Hans Lindetorp at KMH has put in a lot of work creating the framework and the code that controls the music, and he will help me get the last bit right. As I’ve mentioned before, the exhibition will open for the public on the 5th of December.

There will be a release party and concert for the debut Jean and the Mean machine album (mixed and mastered by me) on Tuesday in Stockholm. Check out the Facebook event for more info.

JMM master & jazz trio recording

Today I sent the finished master of Jean and the Mean Machine‘s debut album to the pressing plant. The release date for the album is November 18th, and the duo will go on a short tour in support of the album, starting a couple of weeks before the release.

Last week I recorded Daniel Angebrand Trio in KMH’s Studio 2. The trio features Daniel Angebrand (trumpet), Alexander Brott (guitar) and Jonas Grumstedt (bass). Here’s a track from last week’s session: Daniel Angebrand Trio – It Could Happen To You.

Back to work

I came back to the studio a couple of weeks ago after three weeks’ holiday. I’ve been working on the Sagan Om Alltings Förträfflighet album, which needed a few more mix tweaks. I mastered the album last week, and now I will leave it for a few days before checking if I need to do some additional tweaks.

The Jean and the Mean Machine album will also be mastered shortly, and it will be released sometime later this year.

Mixing & recording

I’ve spent the last couple of weeks working on the mixes for the Sagan Om Alltings Förträfflighet album and the Jean and the Mean Machine album. I did some additional acoustic guitar recording on the last track of the former album last week. Both albums are now getting close to finished. I am meeting Johannes Jacobsson, who’s producing the Jean and the Mean Machine album, next week to make some final mix tweaks before mastering.

Today I mixed a jazz quartet recording that I engineered earlier this week. The quartet consisted of four fine musicians: Tom Eddye Nordén on bass, Rasmus Blixt on drums, Johan Christoffersson on alto saxophone and Filip Ekestubbe on piano. The repertoire was a mix of jazz standards and original compositions. It was apparently the first time these four guys played together and it sounded great! Hopefully some of the cuts from this session will make it onto SoundCloud eventually. I’ll keep you posted.

To wrap this up, here’s a brand new video featuring a beautiful song that I mixed recently:

Espan Festive – “Colorblind” on YouTube

 

Graduation

I graduated from the Bachelor of Arts degree program in music and media production at KMH (Royal College of Music in Stockholm) yesterday! This means my first three years at KMH have come to and end. I will be back however after the summer to begin studying for a Master of Arts degree along with three of my classmates from the bachelor program.

Day:Dream was a very successful event and we managed to pack the venue with an enthusiastic crowd. People whom we spoke to after the show said they appreciated the smooth transitions between the different parts of the show, enhanced by video and audio. It was an interesting and exhausting experience to make everything work on a tight schedule, but I think we pulled it off in the end.

I will spend the summer working on four new albums and an EP and I am very excited to finally have the time to do this! The last few days I’ve revisited the mixes of the Sagan Om Alltings Förträfflighet album, which I hope will be finished within the next couple of weeks. It’s also time to put the final touches to the Jean and the Mean Machine debut album, which has been on hold for the past few months due to different circumstances. After that I will get to work on the Century Of Ecstasy album. The last bit means I will record some new material, and also re-record some old stuff that I’m not pleased with.

To wrap this up, here’s a treat, a video from Christoffer Karlsson’s gig at the Dubliner in Stockholm on May 6th, with me on the bass:

Christoffer Karlsson – Talk To Me on YouTube

Weekly round-up

Just a quick post to summarize this week’s efforts. This week was pretty much the same as last week, mixing, rehearsing and writing songs. Finished a batch of new mixes for Jean and the Mean Machine, and continued to work on the S.O.A.F. record. I have decided now to finish the whole record before putting anything out. I think it will be a lot more fun to work that way, rather than spending weeks just working on one or two tracks. It’s nice to be able to compare different mixes of different tracks, too. Bella and Gustav and I wrote some pretty cool songs this week, and I’ve started thinking about what my live rig should be like. Right now I’m thinking a Fender Bass VI…but I don’t have one of those, so that means I’d have to buy one…hmm, we’ll see. That’s not the only instrument I have in mind; the latest versions of Logic and MainStage allow for some pretty cool experimentation. I’m thinking that with a Bass VI and a MIDI keyboard, plugged into a computer, I could have a lot of fun.

COE press

So, the single “The City Of You” has been out for a week! These were the first blogs to catch on:

http://www.indiekeepscrolling.com/2014/01/q-with-century-of-ecstasy.html

http://meadowmusic.se/en/2014/01/stilett-hurula-the-bland-band-rebstar-and-century-of-ecstasy/

Everything else single-related you will find at centuryofecstasy.com

Had a pretty busy week mixing and rehearsing, and sorting out my application for a Master of Arts program in Music Production! Mixing-wise, I sort of finished the mix of “SPF 25”, at least for now, and started working on another track off the Sagan Om Alltings Förträfflighet album, called “Dötid”. I revisited the Jean and the Mean Machine album, and I will spend a few more hours on it next week, before sending mixes to the band. The songwriting sessions with Bella Sohlberg and Gustav Löfstrand continued to be fruitful, and we’re planning to shoot a live session sometime in April or May. I also rehearsed with Anton Näslund and the band is starting to sound really good and together. Anton has written some new songs, and they’re all really good. It’ll be fun recording them soon!

Mixing J&MM

Spent the last couple of days working on new mixes for folk duo Jean and the Mean Machine‘s upcoming debut album. I’ve been working on this record on and off for the past few months, slowly getting closer to the band’s, the producer’s and my own vision of the sound. Only perfect will do this time!