ever wondered how we write our songs?
4/22/10
4/17/10
my hero
so, peter steele. another late hero. i remember when i discovered type o negative. i was at a party at some girls house and as always, i was too shy to even begin a conversation with a girl so i sat down by the stereo with the other shy guys and listened to metal insread. no girls arund us liked metal so this became a very good way of alienating oneself from them even more. anyways, my friend tommy showed me a new record he had found called "bloody kisses". the two girls kissing on the cover fueled my interest way more than any of the words he uttered about the record. i was sold right away, the provocating athiest in me responded well to songs like christian woman och the angry teen in me on the rest. i later discovered "slow, deep and hard" which spoke to my anger even more. it became a soundtrack for my last five years as a teen. i was and angry a disillusioned kid and the songs humor about all the dark feelings you have as one helped me laugh about it.
as i read that he ws dead i realized a lot of my hereos seem to die. jeff buckley wrote one of the best albums to come out of the 90's and drowned shortly thereafter before finishing its follow up. dimebag darrell was the doer of things impossible in panter but got shot onstage at a damage plan gig for being in the wrong band. another hero drowned in the swedish archipellago leaving wife and kids behind. when esbjörn svensson died, i didn't mourn much of the future music we'd lost as i did the fact that his kids lost their father.
so in retrospect, to all my fallen heroes, here's another videovaganza to feast your eyes
listen to the bassline to the coffe break, simply amazing stuff.
i've only love for drumsets made out of bricks.
one voice, a billion possibilities.
and to sum them up with another fine artist:
a whole river of derchi's to you all! well, except for dave, we hope to keep you everlong.
//misha.
as i read that he ws dead i realized a lot of my hereos seem to die. jeff buckley wrote one of the best albums to come out of the 90's and drowned shortly thereafter before finishing its follow up. dimebag darrell was the doer of things impossible in panter but got shot onstage at a damage plan gig for being in the wrong band. another hero drowned in the swedish archipellago leaving wife and kids behind. when esbjörn svensson died, i didn't mourn much of the future music we'd lost as i did the fact that his kids lost their father.
so in retrospect, to all my fallen heroes, here's another videovaganza to feast your eyes
listen to the bassline to the coffe break, simply amazing stuff.
i've only love for drumsets made out of bricks.
one voice, a billion possibilities.
and to sum them up with another fine artist:
a whole river of derchi's to you all! well, except for dave, we hope to keep you everlong.
//misha.
4/15/10
4/3/10
spare no instrument!
last week we did some final touches to a couple of the songs. 'cobalt sky' got a new intro. we took harrisons vocals and added a distorted drumloop and some organs and it got quite epic. unusual huh? 'cure lou' (wroking title) got some tambourine and 'temle garden' was given a melodica at the end. my friend daniel from vaka is helping us out adding melotrone to a couple of songs as well. all in all most songs already sounded finished, but as we tried stuff out we noticed that some of the songs lifted enormously with the extra touches. other songs didn't really respond to it at all so we decided to let them be and speak for themselves. all in all a good week with great fun, and as of april 1st, we're officially mixing the album! not warp speed, but definitley forward! we also need to rehearse a couple of times for the upcoming come sleep gig we're doing with our friends switch opens, karpis and moloken on may 7th. it's been a while since we played together as a live entity and not just sat down one person at a time recroding.
i'll leave you with the video of the week and some crazy norwegians. their latest album has some real magic going on i tell you. check it out!
//misha
i'll leave you with the video of the week and some crazy norwegians. their latest album has some real magic going on i tell you. check it out!
//misha
3/21/10
sleepwalk capsules.
videoaganza time!
i ran across this video and got a flashback from the year me and thomas started lingua. fresh out of school we sat at his parents house and fell in love with at the drive-in's relationship of command. their album had a lot of influence on lingua's early stuff as well as tool, fireside, deftones and dredg. good times!
oh, and the music nerd in me needs to point out the three different verses in this song (or whatever they are). only the choruses are repetitive. pure genious!
i ran across this video and got a flashback from the year me and thomas started lingua. fresh out of school we sat at his parents house and fell in love with at the drive-in's relationship of command. their album had a lot of influence on lingua's early stuff as well as tool, fireside, deftones and dredg. good times!
oh, and the music nerd in me needs to point out the three different verses in this song (or whatever they are). only the choruses are repetitive. pure genious!
3/20/10
crowds want blood.
ok, so what have we been up to lately? well, i'll tell you. after some sickness we went out and NAILED the last vocals to this record. a most interesting track. the most pop we've ever done, and i don't mean pop as in "help" with the beatles. we also added some zulu to another track, coblat sky. our dear friend harrison from capetown, who is from south africa, came to the studio and added some african vocals and taught me how to so i could do it with him. having spent my youth with peter gabriel albums and the last two years listening to artists such as tinariwen and ali farka touré and also rediscovering paul simon's 80's through vampire weekend, it was an extraordinary experience working with harrison and his musical roots. the song, by the way, lifted itself a fifth notch and once this is fully arranged, edited and mixed it will be one of my absolute favourites on this album.
//misha.
//misha.
3/3/10
a duche says what?
so, last night i was trying to make a video tour on our studio/rehersal room about our gear and the conditions of the place we record at, just as i've been asked to do (one of the few requests we've actually gotten). but after two minutes of jibberish i heard the sound of my own stumbling voice and called it quits. it turns out my english is only this good when i write. as soon as i start speaking there's a lot of words thrown in to fill out the blanks and it sounds rediculous. it just doesn't sound cool (or educative for that matter) when a swedish guy says "y' know?", "n' shit" and can only reach for prhrases like "cool sounds" or "awesome noise" to describe what comes out of his speakers. so, if we are to blog about our gear, it needs to be written in words, not spoken in slang.
instead, i did what i do best and worked my stuff on a song we call "dredg" (and by now you should know why). it has a lot of pop elements to it and to enhance those i added accoustic guitars to all the background stuff. thomas has just bought a new fender telecaster with an emg pick-up and it made the key melody sound almost as if played with an e-bow, but without the tremolo touch. i also wrote an extra melody for the second part of the chorus and it worked perfect as a double for the vocals and gave the song a tad of darkness in the midst of all the pop and happy-joy-joy (remember to take that from someone who wrote our last album, anything you don't wan't to slit your wrists to is happy-joy-joy in my book. or it used to be anyways).
tomorrow, it's thomas' turn to work his tonsils. i will make them bleed.
//misha.
instead, i did what i do best and worked my stuff on a song we call "dredg" (and by now you should know why). it has a lot of pop elements to it and to enhance those i added accoustic guitars to all the background stuff. thomas has just bought a new fender telecaster with an emg pick-up and it made the key melody sound almost as if played with an e-bow, but without the tremolo touch. i also wrote an extra melody for the second part of the chorus and it worked perfect as a double for the vocals and gave the song a tad of darkness in the midst of all the pop and happy-joy-joy (remember to take that from someone who wrote our last album, anything you don't wan't to slit your wrists to is happy-joy-joy in my book. or it used to be anyways).
tomorrow, it's thomas' turn to work his tonsils. i will make them bleed.
//misha.
2/27/10
let my balalaika sing what my guitar wants to say.
next week we'll do our very best to lay down the last bits to the last song. we were to start on it this week but i freezed my hands off trying to get to the studio by public transportation and lost my mood along the way (sweden is experiencing its coldest winter for 144 years and apparently i'm having problems finding the right gloves to go along with it). luckily i'd just written lyrics to another song and thomas read it, liked it and nailed it. all in two hours! i'm still a bit amazed that during this process, we haven't really left the studio more than once or twice feeling we'd done a poor job or even saved some work for the next session. and since we are no machines, it has to be inspiration that drives us. i don't think we're exeptional by any means, i'm just glad to experience what i've imagined so many other bands have experienced berfore me.
so, come early march and we have 14 complete songs. and since 14 songs are a bit much for an album we have a new and luxurious problem we've never had to deal with before: we have to pick out songs for the album. right now, since we've just put our souls into everyone of them, that might become a problem. but it's a cross i can bare, haha, making a killer album and all!
talk to you soon.
/misha.
so, come early march and we have 14 complete songs. and since 14 songs are a bit much for an album we have a new and luxurious problem we've never had to deal with before: we have to pick out songs for the album. right now, since we've just put our souls into everyone of them, that might become a problem. but it's a cross i can bare, haha, making a killer album and all!
talk to you soon.
/misha.
2/19/10
bastard samurai.
me and thomas were in the studio again yesterday. another one of those fantastic days armed to the teeth with creativity! we'd made plans to do the remaining parts to a song called cobalt sky. the drums were already there, and for the first time ever we've looped some of them, and so was anders' bass parts. thomas had already laid down the vocals for the first part of the song and it helped me alot to catch the feel of it. he'd created magic again. there are some high and distant volcals in the beginning of the song before the verse and to them he'd aded what sounded almost like a gospel choior and it just lifted that part to whole new levels. i'd brought my accoustic guitar and as my boss was late to work that day i sat in the hallway listening to old takes of the song and worked out some new ideas to back up the original guitars. we ended up rearranging most guitars to that part and also they added new dimentions to the very same song. as we came to the end of the session and i'd added all the ideas i could come up with thomas just had to lay the last of the vocals. we just couldn't stop working!
i did not get a rough mix of that song to take home with me, but i did get eleves of the songs we'd already done mixed to what thomas likes to refere as "85% done". i was too tired to listen to them after all that yesterday had to offer so instead i listened to them as i went to work today. i really must say, this is going to be something. it's a weird feeling when things finally fall to place because even if you follow every step of the process really carefully you still really have no clue how things are going to turn out. there are too many parameters to that equation. so when you hear the songs together, almost done, and they let you hear in what direction you are going you listen with big ears. and if you like the direction, like i did, and feels it is everything you wanted and then some, you get struck by a sudden burst of pride and joy.
is going to be swell, folks. just you wait and see. i've put thomas on the mission to make a two minute snippet of random (read: carefully chosen) parts from the songs. this way you can judge yourself if we are doing our job right, instead of me just telling you we are.
//misha.
i did not get a rough mix of that song to take home with me, but i did get eleves of the songs we'd already done mixed to what thomas likes to refere as "85% done". i was too tired to listen to them after all that yesterday had to offer so instead i listened to them as i went to work today. i really must say, this is going to be something. it's a weird feeling when things finally fall to place because even if you follow every step of the process really carefully you still really have no clue how things are going to turn out. there are too many parameters to that equation. so when you hear the songs together, almost done, and they let you hear in what direction you are going you listen with big ears. and if you like the direction, like i did, and feels it is everything you wanted and then some, you get struck by a sudden burst of pride and joy.
is going to be swell, folks. just you wait and see. i've put thomas on the mission to make a two minute snippet of random (read: carefully chosen) parts from the songs. this way you can judge yourself if we are doing our job right, instead of me just telling you we are.
//misha.
2/14/10
too legit to quit!
finally!
as of now you can become a fan of lingua at facebook and have your friends discover the greatess of our music too!
world wide domination via world wide web!
//misha.
as of now you can become a fan of lingua at facebook and have your friends discover the greatess of our music too!
world wide domination via world wide web!
//misha.
2/2/10
just add voice.
so, thomas called me up at four in the afternoon saying he'd written the lyrics for a song we call doomsday (but in swedish). it turns out he'd been having one of those clear vision things going on and wrote the thing in an hour or so. i downloaded the lyrics and not much to my surprise, it was real good. so we took care of that energy and met up in the studio to started recoring the song. some of the lyrics didn't really work out so we changed a few rows and words and then the whole thing grew naturaly. we had a real good wibe tnight and i think it shows in the end result.
as we record i usually only have one earphone and keep the the other ear free. i do it for two reasons: 1. i want to hear exactly how thomas sings and 2. i really like the way thomas sounds! i figured i'd let you in on the fun so i recorded this video on my cell inbetween pressing rec and stop. hope you all enjoy the uncut, unautotuned and truly naked sound of thomas and the italian gestures that come with the drama of the lyrics.
///misha.
1/30/10
all we need is a little patience.
so, we have drums for all tracks. i still have two songs to add my guitar magic to and then rework some of the old magic that didn't seem all that magical after listening to it later on. anders is on his last song and then there is thomas and his five songs left to sing. some lyrics still need to be written, but in all fairness, if anyone dare think he might be a slow worker, he's in fact been engineering and mixing everything we've recorded and is 85% done with the mixes to the songs that are fully done. that's some amazing work that 1. i would have never pulled off and 2. deserves some serious acknowlegement! hail thomas, now let's work on them lyrics.
we have a good schedual mapped out and we're keeping it so far. as soon as all songs are recorded with the basic drums, bass, guitar and vocals, we're going to add other instrumentation. i'm really looking forward to that since it almost always takes the songs to whole new dimensions. then, in may, the rest of us wait impatiently while thomas finishes the mixes and we get to organize the songs into an album. then, there's more imaptient waiting as we send the album off for mastering. but when that is finally done and we have a complete record with artwork and all. we send it off to aural music and (yep, you should be able to guess this by now) we wait for september and its release.
so, wait is the disease and impatience our cure.
now what?
//misha.
we have a good schedual mapped out and we're keeping it so far. as soon as all songs are recorded with the basic drums, bass, guitar and vocals, we're going to add other instrumentation. i'm really looking forward to that since it almost always takes the songs to whole new dimensions. then, in may, the rest of us wait impatiently while thomas finishes the mixes and we get to organize the songs into an album. then, there's more imaptient waiting as we send the album off for mastering. but when that is finally done and we have a complete record with artwork and all. we send it off to aural music and (yep, you should be able to guess this by now) we wait for september and its release.
so, wait is the disease and impatience our cure.
now what?
//misha.
1/19/10
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