Farewell to the Sea
In all honesty, this one is something of an epilogue. Memories are still fresh from the final couple of days of work, but once the lyrics for "Dry Cooler" really got going, it became increasingly difficult to make time for these diary entries. So here's a brief recap of things that still happened, in very random and unorganized order.
I was able to put together two complete verses and a chorus for "Dry Cooler" which was eventually renamed "Tugboat's Call". The vocal takes for the track were mostly done outdoors at night, on the terrace. The sound may not be hi-fi to tha max, but the vibe felt right. We will see if they end up making the album. We had to turn off all the electricity, too, cause the damn hot tub wouldn't shut up. But we did make damn sure it was buzzing with heat once more after we switched the power back on.
We sat down one night for dinner in front of the television, flicked through the satellite channels, and lo and behold: a goddamn Finnish war movie. No joke. Second World War flick too from a few years back. Good for a few laughs, but mostly just absurd. I think we finished the same night's work by watching the new X-Files movie on Johannes's laptop. Johannes slept through half of it. I think he managed to watch it again on the return flight to Helsinki.
Kari and Johannes hopped on some mountain bikes and rode all over the damn peninsula. They may have stopped for some drinks in a seaside bar. But they most definitely did stop to buy an African thumb piano, which was immediately tested and recorded and sounds awesome. Johannes also blew a tire on the way back. Probably while doing some of those fancy bike tricks Kari insisted on shooting.
I ran every day. Based on Johannes's GPS measurements and my own estimates, a total of about 50 kilometers. Quite happy. Just pissed off it's over. Keeping this summer running thing going will not be much fun on sleet, ice or snow covered streets and paths.
We ended up recording the last vocal takes about half an hour before disassembling the studio on the last night. And ended up finding one REALLY good gourmet style restaurant down in the village. Some fantastic meat and fish courses.
All things considered, the facilities and amount of equipment did hamper our work a little. We couldn't work on a ton of things, but it's still been extremely useful coming here. A new song has appeared, out of scratch to near-finished. And some random stuff to other tracks have been recorded. AND there's been plenty of listening, discussing, coming up with ideas that can be done once back home again.
It's been good. The sea, the sun, the black hills. We're gonna miss this damn place.
Tommy
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