Älymystö Album Release Tour & Iron Sky Goes Germany
I’m currently at home, reeling from the shock of the shock caused by my surroundings. In the last month I’ve spent about five days at home, the rest of the time being eaten by our diving trip to Hurghada, which I wrote about in the previous blog post, followed by Älymystö’s album publication tour and after that a week and a half in Germany with the Iron Sky crew.
The few days after we got back to home from Hurghada were full of activity. Started my new work week by fixing my brand new Macbook Pro to a working condition, and promptly getting a mild stomach flu on my first work day. My upset stomach kept me at home for the beginning of the week and slowed me up enough that I couldn’t get all the work preparation done before it was time to leave for the Älymystö tour.
As I’ve written earlier, Älymystö published its first release since Atomgrad and we went out to Tampere, Helsinki, Tallinn and Riga to promote it on a tour. In Finland the weather has been really wintery and blizzardy, bad enough to get trams stuck in the snow and ice in Helsinki downtown. Considering that our trip had surprisingly few mishaps in the Finnish end, and even driving around the Baltics was easy. The tour was incredibly satisfying: we had fun gigs, playing was fun and went well, we managed to stream live video from some of them to the net and we got to visit the coolest fucking underground club we had ever seen, Elektra in Riga. You can read more about our trip in Älymystö’s blog!
The only bad thing was that we got back home around midnight on Sunday, and Timo and I had to get up at four to catch our plane to Berlin for the Iron Sky trip. I had slept for three and a half hours in the previous night and spent the day driving us from Riga to Tallinn. When the alarm clock went off after another 3,5 hour night, I was sure I’d fucking die right then, right there.
So, my new job as the publicist and making of -producer of Iron Sky started off with a bang. On Monday we went straight into business, me with a new camera I hadn’t even touched before I got it in Germany. What followed was a week and a half of movie business, including everything from going through moods and set plans through checking out potential shooting locations and ending with casting new actors. I can honestly say that it was probably the most fun ten days I’ve spent so far while working from nine in the morning to nine or ten in the evening. The days just flew past, the couple of free nights we spent out were fun and the whole deal filled me up with enthusiasm about the work. Intrigued? Read more info from Iron Sky’s production blog!
On the hobby front Susi and I also started an intensive course in Arabic and the first lessons were today. So, yet another language with non-latin letters, and a rather difficult language at that. We started our studies with book Arabic, which is kind of useless if you want to use the language in a spoken setting. Then again, it gives your a good basis on learning one of the spoken dialects. Maybe in the future we’ll be having trips to Egypt which are composed half and half of diving and intensive language study.
In any case, check out the Älymystö and Iron Sky blogs for both blog posts and pretty pics. For me it’s time to hit the bed so I’ll have the energy to go through over five hours of video from Germany and a couple of hours of footage from Älymystö tour – so yes, there will be video too.
Band News: Album Date & Video Greeting
Our band Älymystö has been getting more and more active throughout the year. In the spring we managed to hone out the tracks for our new album titled 19:38:00, which finally got an official street date. The album, which is a split vinyl co-published with And Then You Die, will be released for digital distribution in Christmas Eve. The vinyl itself, a collector’s edition picture disc, will be published in 1st of April 2010. So, be sure to visit Spotify, iTunes Music Store or Nokia Music Store on 24th of December and listen what we’ve been up to.
We are going to promote the album with a short tour in the beginning of January. Looks like we’ll be visiting Helsinki, Tampere, Tallinn and Riga – more information incoming when everything’s been confirmed. And speaking of promotion, Skithund Records came up with the following mood piece / ad for the release:
We also had yet another Band Camp practice weekend and for the first time ever we didn’t go to Ilde’s home farm in middle of nowhere. Instead we were in a civilized urban area (or anyway in Tampere) in an official band practice space which Remo got on loan from some other band. Most of us spent the nights in our cabin that was half an hour away. There was saunaing, smoking some fish and good, deep sleep. Maybe it wasn’t that RAWK, but damn it was relaxing and refreshing. On the musical side the weekend was very very productive. We managed to get many of our new songs into a shape fit for public performance and genrally got our shit together after this longish gig hiatus.
I also shot a short video greeting as evidence that we are still alive. Enjoy!
On Stage with Enochian Crescent @ Tuska 2009
If someone had told me 10 years ago that one day I’d be on stage during the biggest metal festival in the Nordic countries, playing theremin with a black metal band, I would have taken the claim with just a bit of skepticism.
Be it as it may, this was the exact situation I found myself in during the last weekend of June 2009. After Älymystö‘s previous gig I heard that Enochian Crescent is looking for someone to play theremin in one song medley and told my contact that I’d be interested. This Monday I got a call from the singer of the band, went to visit their band practice on Wednesday and on Friday I found myself packing my stuff and heading over to Nosturi for the soundcheck.
I wasn’t the only visiting artist Enochian Crescent had – there was actually enough of a crowd for a whole another band. Backstage was nicely eclectic with a mix of styles. There was me in my old suit jacket, white shirt and bow tie, Matt Dirty / DigitalFiend pinning bows on his scalp with hypodermic needles, Hellwind Inferion of Urn in a cape and damn cool makeup, plus of course the EC guys themselves.
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