Athletic Arms

new things

2008-04-07T23:19:00.006+03:00

athletic arms is no longer active, but we gave it a good blow out at the last show that was cut quite short.. perhaps the fact that it only lasted twenty-five minutes gave it that extra something.

anyway, no longer playing in aa doesn't mean that the individual members of the group have given away their instruments; some links to a smattering of different projects that are active, or becoming active, are listed below.

rainroom (guitarist jere and his doombient group)
horse and hounds (a whole lot of people from aa + some new people too. please note that while the name of the group references this blog, the band does not play any of the songs we used to perform as athletic arms)
anustik and pakokauhu (two different solo-projects of drummer tuukka)

stay tuned for a video of the last aa show, we'll probably be editing it some time during the next two weeks..

generic bulletin

2008-03-12T14:28:00.003+02:00

aa will be disbanding on the 16th march, but there are still two chances to see them live before that;

- tonight, 12.3 @ om'pu in the kallio district of Helsinki....... an acoustic show plus aa DJs. SHOWTIME IS AT 9 PM, FREE ENTRY.

- saturday 15.3 @ liberté, Helsinki, with navigations, mesmer and malous mal. tickets 6 euro.........

...both shows will include full string sections, horns and masking tape.

and something in finnish

Moi kaverit. Jos huhumylly ei viime viikkoina ole päässyt pyörähtämään käyntiin, niin kerrottakoon nyt teille kaikille että Athletic Arms siirtyy telakalle tämän viikon jälkeen. Soitamme täällä Helsingissä kaksi viimeistä keikkaamme ja toivottavasti mahdollisimman moni teistä kykenee kynnelle. HUOM! Sekä puhallin- että jousisektiot ovat viimeisten keikkojen kunniaksi koolla, joten villiä tusinaa katsomaan joka iikka!

Tässä siis päivämäärät:

Keskiviikkona 12.3 @ Ravintola Om'pu (Siltasaarenkatu 15). Akustinen erikoiskeikka. Soitto alkaa klo 21! Ja tää on ilmainen.

ja se vihoviimeinen....
Lauantaina 15.3 @ Liberté (Kolmas Linja 34). Menossa mukana myös Mesmer, Navigations (Tku) sekä Malousmal (Oulu). Illan showtime klo 21.30! Liput 6 euroa.

Timjam / AA-kerho

for anyone that cares, we didn't want it to end like this but it had to. there are plans of making available all our previous work as a zipped package of mp3-files. the idea i suppose would be that we encourage anyone that downloads them to share them with their friends and ask their friends to share them too and so on. you get the idea. more on this at a later date.

NEW RECORD + INDEFINITE HIATUS

2008-01-15T09:33:00.003+02:00

NEW RECORD
there will be a cd-r record available to people coming to the TVO show on 22nd february, one that we recorded together with Navigations last weekend.. The record will feature both our groups playing improv, athletic arms and navigations songs and one very special sabbath-influenced piece we composed together using an ouija-board.

INDEFINITE HIATUS
i'll be the first to admit we've always had our share of problems and clashes of personalities in our group, but it seems to be time for us to take a break from the whole thing. and time to take a break from the endless routine of only ever seeing your friends with an instrument attached.. i'm not fully aware of how these things are meant to be done, or how you're supposed to interact in what is loosely known as "a band".

not that we didn't take this seriously, because we really did. and there really is nothing i personally detest more than these people that get together in a room and get high and play space-rock or fucking bongos for three hours.

but ultimately not knowing how to be in a band seems to have condemned us to just that. i keep hearing all these great suggestions on how to keep a group together and steer things toward productivity; like how we should all get together and listen to music and cook together rather than just play, and get inspired by what we hear to create something of our own.. how important it is to silently communicate with others.. how you should probably rehearse less than twice a week, every week apart from christmas, for the last three or four years.

but it seems all this is now a bit late. some of us have been playing these songs for six years, and for six years it could have been really cool. but it turns out it wasn't meant to be.

we will still play the remaining shows we have announced, but everything that happens after that is quite unclear. if you haven't seen us live before, please come to one of the following 3 shows, it may be your last chance.

22nd 2 2008, TVO, Turku with Navigations. four euros.
12th 3 2008, Om'pu, Helsinki. acoustic set.
15th 3 2008, Liberté, Helsinki with Mesmer, Navigations & Malousmal.

corpse-masks, we haven't gone death metal yet.

2008-01-09T19:05:00.000+02:00

FIRST, some announcements:

1. the acoustic show at om'pu scheduled for january 16th has been postponed 'til the 13th of march 2008...

2. volume four in the cd-r series is on it's way, and it was recorded live in a forest. a possible title at the moment is "The Hiphop Vintage Mokrokirka All-Song", with a sleeve featuring photographs taken on black and white film, using a flash in the dark pan.

some pictures from the photosessions below:

oranssi 16.11

2007-11-17T15:28:00.000+02:00

thankyou to everyone who came to the gig last night at oranssi, we had a good time and we hope you did too. our gratitude to the munchies and she! as well, both for agreeing to play at such short notice and for bringing the rock action

this was our last show this year (unless something else comes up), but we'll be playing again in january.. more details below

(some of these may yet change)
sat jan 12 @ henry's pub, kuopio, with florist and malousmal
wed jan 16 @ om'pu, helsinki, (acoustic)
fri feb 22 @ tvo, turku, with navigations
sat mar 15 @ liberté, helsinki, with mesmer, navigations & malousmal

translation haapakorpi is back with a less sufficient bladder !

2007-09-26T13:25:00.002+03:00

some stuff that may or may not have been popping into our collective inbox over the last 24 hours:

26/09/2007 01:24AM

Parma kolis
arestis män hitaaks ämmäks
hipase slaikkaan fritsu
hei slaikka tuu nyt reitil oon

Parma kolis
arestis köyrin
Hitler heiluu, meikä nihilissä
&viehän
prässit
painoon

tissiswatjugend . tissiswatjugend.
tissiswatjugend kelju messias

Parma kolis
mä kiven alla käännyn
se natina
mä kiven alla käännyn
mut verstaal on nyt eero

(fiu poraa nimittäin ja rasvaa se alas maa se
fiu poraa nimittäin ja rasvaa se alas maa se
fiu poraa nimittäin railast naisen railast naisen)

26/09/2007 10:07AM

näin viime yönä unta että minä, jere ja roy oltiin perustamassa strippibaaria silja serenaden 19. kerrokseen. meille kerrottiin puhelimessa että se on tosi hieno paikka ja pienellä remontilla saadaan siitä maailman hienoin baari, mutta kun mentiin sinne niin se oli kuin pommin jäljiltä ja täynnä narkkareita jotka hyökkäs meidän kimppuun. jee
anna

25/09/2007 01:34PM

we are not here anymore

photos from the semifinal show (21/09/2007 00:25AM) are on the way soon

sähköjänis kolome 31.8, the 2nd edition of sinister vänster AND OTHER SUPER-IMPORTANT "NEWS"

2007-09-09T11:17:00.000+03:00

PIEKSÄMÄKI

PAINTING SINISTER FRIENDS

photos from the show at our myspace page. im sick of trying to post photos on blogger. it keeps cutting off, and this entry took two weeks to get posted.

sinister vänster was "demo of the month" in the last issue of finnish rock magazine rumba by the way. plus we're playing live again:

liberté 8.8

2007-08-16T14:59:00.000+03:00

thankyou to everyone who came to the liberté show with kiki pau last week. the evening was a great success both musically and financially, so much so in fact, that we are pleased to announce that we will be making a second run of volume 3 in the athletic burns cd-r series with all new sleeves and inserts and paintings and little minigrip bags filled with blood and wee.

for those of you that don't have the record yet, it will be on sale at sähköjänis kolome in pieksämäki. you can also get it by post - just send an email to athleticarmsATgmailDOTcom with your home address and we'll take it from there. price is 3 euros +1e postage.

photos from redrum by mikko

2007-07-25T20:00:00.000+03:00

KCEHCDNUOS

EGATSKCAB

EVIL

getting away with redrum

2007-07-16T22:40:00.000+03:00

we have a setlist that we're altering! we found someone to play trumpet at the show! the next cd-r is on its way!

some of the people that have played in the band in the past will not be around for this gig; essi on violin, iina on trumpet, keyboards and bass and johannes on saxophone, percussion and accordion; so hooray for the replacements! anna on 1st violin! timjam on keyboards and metallophone! joel on clarinet! petteri on bass! jokke on 'cello! jussi on trumpet!

below is a picture and a video proving that we have been busy, and not wasting time eating bananas etc.

we have another show in august coming up, so here is a reminder:
24.7 @ redrum with of montreal (helsinki)
8.8 @ liberté with kiki pau (helsinki)
31.8 @ wanhat weturitallit, sähköjänis kolome festival (pieksämäki)

studiovideo

2007-05-24T11:33:00.000+03:00

culled from the six hours of tape we magnetised during three weekends in january 2007. we're still mixing what we recorded during these sessions, and we hope to release them some day in the not too distant future..

athletic burns vol. 3 : SINISTER VÄNSTER

2007-05-17T13:43:00.000+03:00

here is the tracklisting
1. Not A Whisper - Semifinal Live (29th March 2007) 8:05
2. A Farewell To Athletic Arms 10:36
3. This Just Won't Do - TVO Live (7th April 2007) 7:50
4. ....Dark Intelligence 15:26
5. Aircrash - TVO Live (7th April 2007) 7:53
6. Force Field 3 - Malous Mal Remix 3:55
7. These Are Our Arms, Flexxing 21:18

will be available starting this friday (18.5) at the telakka show for 3 euros

arthritic butts VOL3 + a show added, and another cancelled

2007-05-14T13:00:00.000+03:00

athletic burns vol.3 will hopefully be available for 3 euros at the telakka show (Tampere friday 18.5) and will most likely include some live-material, rehearsal room recordings, and the remix of ff3 by malous mal. but this may well change by the end of the week..

we need a rest for a while, so we've cancelled the rock town show (june 7thh), but we'll get it all together again in july to play a show at redrum in helsinki with the mighty of montreal. bye for now then!

SUMMER 2007 LIVE DATES
18.5 - telakka, tampere with On Volcano
24.7 - redrum, helsinki with Of Montreal
31.8 - Sähköjänis Kolome Festival, pieksämäki

we're making a music video

2007-05-11T01:02:00.000+03:00

here are some photos of the work in progress:

we're trying to learn how to relax a bit at the moment. things are strange without the girls (apart from emily) at rehearsals. been doing odd things the last few weeks, lengthy experimental racket james. ..just today was the first time in ages, jere and i, sitting down and just playing together in an empty room. photo below

listen to your genitals

2007-04-24T12:23:00.000+03:00

A WEEKEND REPORT FROM THE PROMISED LAND OF JYVÄSKYLÄ:

we arrived at jyrock on friday evening, drove up to jussi's place, left our sleeping bags and things at his flat and walked back to ilokivi to see some of the wonderful bands playing there. paavoharju played their lovely folky weird music to a packed upstairs room, rubik kicked ass downstairs and alamaailman vasarat made a wonderful klezmer racket. we trudged back to jussi's flat in the rain looking forward to the next evening..

on saturday, we left for pieksämäki at around two in the afternoon to fetch our drums, bass and guitaramp, kindly delivered in a van by another band from helsinki, strong, who had a show up there the same night. unfortunately, we had accidentally taken one of their guitars, which we only realised once their guitarist called us and asked to have it back. much shifting of all our equipment into one car at the side of the road in the middle of nowhere ensued, and while andrei and i turned back east, sampo drove our gear to jyväskylä in a rush as we were already late for soundchecks. sampo et al had already set up the drums onstage for the other bands to use as we got back (after spending about twenty minutes lost on the other side of jyväskylä), and we sat upstairs having lunch while felix zenger did his soundcheck.

we went on stage at quarter past nine, and started our set while sampo fiercely projected hardcore porn at the wall behind us. some little problems came up, but they usually do, so no worries there. we met some nice people afterwards, and spent the rest of the evening watching bands (marissa nadler! kaukolampi/puranen/nykänen! RISTO!!), and sitting in the back room listening to the guys from paavoharju tell us some very strange stories. all in all, the whole weekend was one of the best experiences i've had at a rock festival. our neverending gratitude to jyrock, to jussi for the place to sleep, to sampo and andrei for filming the show, and everybody who came to the event.

here are some links:
photos by mikko niemelä
photos by henri lassander
and photos by henri järvenpää
puimuri has a video-interview with the organiser of the festival juha luomala, and some festival-footage too
and finally, desibeli has a finnish language review of saturday night at jyrock here.

next....

2007-04-16T18:51:00.001+03:00

athletic burns vol. 2 is ready:

1. aircrash at loennrothsgatan
2. turned 3/4
3. not a whisper
4. crocodile teeth + darkest days

it lasts about 30 minutes, available to buy at live-shows for 3 euros, or plus postage if you'd like to have it mailed to you - contact us at athleticarms@gmail.com for more info if you like..

in other "news", the future of the band is resting on rickety beams at the moment. the show at jyrock (april 21st) will be our last with the present line-up (at least for the time being), as both violin players are leaving the group. the gig following jyrock (telakka/TRE 18.5) will similarly be iina's last with us, again, for the time being.

any other shows that we already have planned will be played with some or all of the present group, but no more new live dates will be taken on for the time being. we need to re-think it all, and that may take some time, but we hope to be back on form later this year. below then, are the shows we have lined up presently:

21.4 - jyrock, jyväskylä
18.5 - telakka, tampere + on volcano
24.5 - rocktown, helsinki
31.8 - sähköjänis 3 festival, pieksämäki

athletic burns vol.2 is coming soon

2007-04-04T00:19:00.000+03:00

improve your sensing to the speed of horses, improve it to the speed of robots. arriving in your ears at the speed of tetris on saturday april seventh at the tvo show in turku. more details coming soon....

timetravel dream

2007-04-01T13:07:00.000+03:00

i have this recurring dream about touring in time and alternate realities. we have to find a special door to go through to get to the next venue or end up in a waiting-room and sit around there in anticipation of the next door opening. my dad is always there lounging on a sofa, but he never says anything - he just looks at me with this expression that seems to be saying "you're late".

so the first place we end up in is a tram full of people (definitely influenced by sitting in a rented tram last night). i try to explain to some man that i'm lost and try to tell him where i'm from, but he keeps interrupting me. get off the tram, walk through a door and i'm in something that looks like the wild west, except that every house here is a japanese restaurant (that only serves cajun cooking). we try to organise a rehearsal but emily is the only one that shows up: i go looking for the rest of the band in one of these eateries, a whole lot bigger than before and they're sitting on the floor, watching a video of themselves, eating. i lose my cool and shout at them for always slowing things down and being lazy.. they pull pillows and other such padding from under their clothes and leave me to pay the bill, and i stand there wondering why i always have to go fucking mental for no good reason.

i follow the others through a door, and we're in flamenco-land (i've dreamt of this place before), it's permanent night here, and the place seems to be deserted apart from these mariachi-types playing baritone-guitars dancing in circles, in utter silence, the only sound here is the desert wind (or the kind you get at beaches at night). the guitarists are always surrounded by three lady-flamenco dancers, that look like holograms. the greens and reds on their big sleeves shine brightly in neon, but they don't look real. we start to leave. essi tells me that jere wants to stay here, i turn around and see him walking back through the spaghettiwestern archway we just came through towards one of these mariachis. he only has two hologram-dancers, and when jere gets close enough, he sort of shimmers and turns into one of these women. and i think to myself that that atom is stable now. we go through a door and we're in the waiting room. my dad's still there, and we all are now, except for jere, but nobody wonders why he didn't want to come with us.

semifinal 29.3

2007-03-31T14:35:00.000+03:00

we probably played the best show we've done at semifinal on thursday. everything stayed nearly-in-tune and nobody made many mistakes.. more good times to be expected at tvo in turku. consider this our farewell tour. it seems now that we might be having a rather drastic change in line-up at the end of april (so in effect, jyrock is the present group's last show). but we'll still keep it up i expect, towards new adventures etc.

here are some pictures from backstage.

vadelma 24.2

2007-03-01T09:55:00.000+02:00

vadelma was good fun, even though we ended up being badly out of tune during the last half of the show, and the vocals were inaudible from start to finish. it felt more relaxed than any show we've done in the last six months, and that alone merits a good night for me (although some of the others seem to disagree).

we managed to sell most of the first batch of 50 records of the athletic burns vol.1 cd-r and now only have five left, which will most likely run out by the end of the week. if you haven't got one, you shouldn't feel too worried; we are making more of these, at least a second lot of fifty records before we move on to volume 2.

in other news, those friendly people at jyrock 2007 have booked us to play at their festival. it's all happening in jyväskylä, 20th-21st april. tickets are 24 euro for two days, and 15 for a single day. the other acts include:

Differnet (SE)
Marissa Nadler (US)
Agent M (EST)
Alamaailman Vasarat
Magenta Skycode
Kaukolampi, Puranen, Nykänen
Rubik
Felix Zenger
The Scaramangas
Paavoharju
Risto
Tuomas Toivonen
Keuhkot
Le Futur Pompiste
Shogun Kunitoki

more information on the event at the jyrock website

how to measure, cut and fold 50 record-sleeves in five hours or less

2007-02-22T10:17:00.000+02:00

although it took us about seven. the following is a tutorial for anyone who wants to do something like this themselves in the future. the work is repetetive and very slightly boring, but it's fun with a friend, and the end result makes it all worth it.

1. measure up an A3 size sheet of 250g/m2 paper, and divide it into three parts in 26cm by 14.8cm size

2. once you have three same-size pieces, give each an 8mm margin on the long (26cm) side

3. fold the paper so that the 14.8cm sides are in line with each other:

4. cut two small triangles either side of the center crease, make sure they don't go over the 8mm line!

5. cut off both margins that don't have the triangle cut near the center crease

6. fold the remaining two margins inside and glue them to the opposite surface before placing them under a press of your choice (we used two atlases and a bowling ball)

athletic burns vol.1 : FF3

2007-02-21T10:28:00.000+02:00

we're working towards getting the first in a series of self-released cd-r records finished in time for our gig at vadelma on saturday. the first batch will be one of 50 copies, and it will most likely only be available at live shows to start with.

the song is an alternate extended version of force field 3 in anticipation of the studio-recording we started in january.

photos from the sessions below

next: max designs and cuts up the outer sleeves

next: maija paints the inner sleeves

friction on your rails

2007-02-07T14:57:00.000+02:00

everything has been recorded and mixing has begun. we're working on new songs at the moment, mainly parts 1 and 2 of force field, both of which are going in interesting directions. ff1 has five parts and is fairly easy to follow, in that it is turning out to be a nice straight-forward quiet song, even though it uses 3/4, 4/4 and 5/4 time simultaneously, with lots of keyboards and samu using the ringtone composition feature of his old mobile phone through his guitar pickup. ff2, on the other hand, is more likely to go in the opposite direction, sprawling all over the place and featuring some of the most complicated structure we've ever dealt with. the vocals aren't finished yet though, so once emily starts singing, the whole thing will most likely start to sound a lot easier to approach, hopefully consolidating all the various bits and pieces that sound, in turn, like ennio morricone, fly pan am, bacharach & david and 'false advertising' by bright eyes.

click this link to download a 37 minute long jam on one of the parts of FF1.

we have some shows lined up for the spring now too, saturday the 24th of february at vadelma (www.vadelma.org), thursday 29th of march at semifinal with mesmer and murmansk and saturday april 7th at TVO (turku) with navigations, imaginary friend and pocket knife.

FF2 nearly finished, and sounding groovy

2007-01-24T13:51:00.001+02:00

recently listening to she is not alone by sonic youth, choir of tiny boys by the crayon fields, emily by joanna newsom, last night i dreamt that somebody loved me by low, banshee beat by animal collective and on a neck on a spit by grizzly bear.

and watching peep show via tv-links.co.uk

recording, vol. 5

2007-01-22T15:41:00.000+02:00

the following concerning the weekend of 20th - 21st of january 2007:

saturday:

after arriving at the home-studio in tuusula and having a quick meal, ilkka and i started by getting the basics ready for recording my vocals; actually, i stood around while ilkka began the tenuous task of setting up two vocal microphones, one going directly onto one track dry, while the other was routed through a fender guitar amp, using the built-in reverb, and a third mic for the amplifier going onto a second track. once this was sorted out, and the vocal parts for 'ff3' were finished, we agreed that the vocal sound through the amp suited the song very well. we used the same setup for the rest of the vocal tracks, although bringing down the amount of reverb for 'i sway', which sounded good in the end, even with the singing in the chorus crackling with digital distortion.

sunday:

we were expecting samu to show up at about half-past twelve to start work on his guitars, toy piano and vl-tone, so we had time to record a quick mandolin take before he arrived. samu called me at one o'clock to tell us he had been held up as he'd got into a car crash about thirty meters from the studio, and was waiting for the police to arrive. luckily, no one was hurt badly, but the car was deeply dented in the side, leaving the drivers-side door sticking out at a slight angle. clearly fate would not have samu play his parts for the record, further demonstrated by a two-hour long powercut later that evening, that only rectified itself soon before the last bus to helsinki. he did manage to play most of his guitars, but the missing feedback for 'this just won't do' and the toy piano and vl-tone for 'ff3' will have to wait until later. probably next weekend.

-roy

recording, vol. 4

2007-01-15T20:52:00.000+02:00

saturday was started with violins, once we managed to negotiate our way to the right side of tuusula from helsinki. everyone agreed that these violin-takes were the best we could have possibly hoped for, even in force field pt. 3 in which, true to our form, all the strings were improvised. next was roy and a nylon-string classical guitar take (with nothing classical about it); followed rapidly by the moment most of us started drinking, and thus, the possibly ill-advised intro for the record ("for sheffield") got recorded: violins, acoustic bass and electric guitar in the livingroom, a microphone in the hallway and another in the bedroom. the end result still sounded good the next day, so we'll probably keep it.

we left for tuukka's at around 2am in max's car, and stayed up 'til the morning. as we sat in the car, pulling out of the drive going back to ilai's flat, we suddenly realised we'd left samu behind, which turned out to be a bit of a strange situation at the door, explaining that "we sort of left our guitarist behind".

once we got back to the tenement, emily and ilai started by recording a ten-second portasound solo while max drove to korso station to pick up iina & jere. apparently pregnancy tests were on special offer at the local kiosk. jere played two loud guitar distortion tracks through something called the 'pepper box' (pictured above), and went home soon after. iina played some trumpet, essi played a bit more violin, emily sang all her vocals and played some metallophone with iina, and to wrap up the evening at around nine, roy played his last guitar-parts.

we still need to record roy's vocal parts, samu's guitars, toy piano, telephone conversation, vl-tone keyboard, mandolin, a saxophone solo and some portasound drumsounds. and that should be about it.

recording, vol. 3

2007-01-07T21:00:00.000+02:00

last day in the big room..........accordion for distress and i sway, pianosteinway for force field #3 and saxophone for i sway by johannes...............trumpet for i sway and distress & toy sax for distress by iina........pianosteinway for force field #3 and metallophone for distress and force field #3 by emily.................steinway noise for distress by samu..........only vocals, strings, a few guitars and some percussion and portasound to go before ilai starts mixing.................everything done today, and the whole room cleared within eight hours, so i dare say things are going very well

recording, vol. 2

2007-01-06T11:23:00.000+02:00

drums and bass on clicks done now, all four songs are sounding good, although 'distress' was done without any exact time. thursday was a slow day with not a whole lot happening; we did however get johannes' percussion for 'this just won't do' and iina's steinway for the same. jere finished all his guitar parts and samu played his vl-tone bits last night (friday), and we expect to get most of the horn stuff done today, including metallophones, toy instruments, accordion and more concert-piano.

today is our last day in the present spacious surroundings - all vocals, most guitars and the violins will be done later in an apartment building somewhere.

recording, vol. 1

2007-01-04T12:52:00.000+02:00

most of our instruments moved around from one place to another, microphones set up, and when we started with the drums, bass and guitar for "this just won't do", with a click ticking away in the background, we noticed how much easier all this is to do than before. perhaps it's that we've rehearsed, improved at our playing or too tired to feel anxious. this first day was great fun though. in addition to the drum set and one guitar amp (the other one had perfectly logically broken down about a week earlier) we're using an ampeg bass-stack which is very nice.. ronn moss is here with us too, but he may be going on a bit of a holiday now as the studio has a steinway available. also, ronn moss has been having some trouble with his legs, some screws are loose and he continuously looks like he's about to fall over. in addition to the above, we've taken in various effects pedals, three keyboards, a 'cello bow and musical saw, a small accordion, two baby monitors, three metallophones and a packet of coffee.

this is all for now, more soon later!

das gelbe vom ei

2006-11-22T10:53:00.000+02:00

to keep anyone interested up to date, there are some mp3's here to listen to. progress is still slow with the new stuff; we played force field pt.2 at kuudes linja and immediately regretted it. however, this seems to be one of the necessary steps to be taken when writing something new. for us at least.

what we usually do when we're attempting to write a pop song (in four easy steps):

1. spend months playing nonsense, sixteen parts or something, then start to cut down, reel in the good, and argue amongst ourselves about which part was good etc.

2. spend many more weeks working on what you now have left, disagree with people about silly things like "nine chords in that progression is too much!" "well three isn't enough!". which is just shit

3. suddenly notice that everyone is getting tired of the new stuff and would rather work on new new stuff, which is basically going back to step one, before reading step 4.

4. at some point the something we've spent since august tackling is starting to sound like a proper song that still needs vocals. from here on it gets easier, usually someone has an idea of what the song might end up sounding like by now and we tend to go with that.

so here are some of the fruits of our labour:
AA-051206-1
AA-051206-3
AA-121206-1 (for Sheffield)

we're going to do something at a studio in the first week of january and the plan is to record 'this just won't do' and a second song, to be released later on in the spring of 2007.

kuudes linja poster in progress

2006-11-15T02:20:00.000+02:00

orange,red & black ink on paper, colours inverted. this is for the show at kuudes linja on the 22nd of november.

the wheat and barley in the hem-of-your-skirt

2006-11-04T16:28:00.000+02:00

lighten up, roy. we finally have a name now, 'athletic arms' is something that seems to be ironic and ambiguous enough for our purposes. we might have a gig coming up at the end of the month, apparently 90% certain.. 'force field' seems to be ready now in form, the only thing left to do is emily's vocal; 'death suit' seems to be going in a rather odd direction as of wednesday, leaning away from lumbering, teetering on the brink of fast music. still fairly big in it's way, which is always nice. something to empty stadiums with, or even small rooms if it turns out right. the general consensus at the moment seems to be that we should drop the title 'turned' out of the whole deal, these new songs work well played in a row, but at the same time they function perfectly well on their own too. so all is well now, things are looking up to an extent and there are some plans of recording something in january that we can give a proper release.

p.s. i will try to leave out the nonsense of previous posts in future. planning the future outlook of stuff is alright if i'm the only one that comes here, but i think it's time to put up some links to this blog soon. a redesign of the ole' website is on it's way too, if i ever manage to tackle php.

continental drift, you madam, you made me shift; and now all the ladies are staring at my balls in the bearing.

2006-10-18T03:48:00.003+03:00

i have about 120 minutes of material for just the first two parts of turned in various formats, c-tape and minidisc mainly. fucking destructive to the soul, all this building and building without knowing how far to take it, where to stop, who to build it with. i get frustrated when things don't progress - and at the same time we have all these little pieces of shitty pop-music floating about. everything about this is in a continuous state of flux, and to fully understand it, i think i need it to stop for a while. or at least slow down. so, stop writing to get rid of the anxiety you feel when you stop writing. it makes no sense.

if there was an easy way around this, i think i just might take it. BUT there is not, the fact is that we have a badly airconditioned little room with drums, drunks and amplifiers in it and an unknown amount of people come by to play there a couple times a week. this should work just as simply as it sounds. it doesn't though, and i don't understand that. there are all these bits i mentioned earlier parrallel things making noise that i need to write down now: forcefield int. BASSDRUM AC.GUITAR (F) VIOLINS (one on accents, another not) VLTONE (AC) ext1. (Am) AC.GUITAR has some chords here, Am Gm F A A# (for a chorus) and Am F Dm F etc. violins do hungarian shit shit shit. BASS and VLTONE are dating now, they share everything, especially E/A C/C E/A F/C or something. keyboard of the 80s leads. did i mention TRUMPET was here all along. ext2. (Em) is glued on top of ext1, this is to help me remember. BASS is still friends with VLTONE in background although the thrill has subsided now and VLTONE never opens doors and probably sleeps around. the verse goes /E C /EC F /E C /EC F /FG /GA /AF:and then it starts again. there is an ELECTTRIC GUITAR here: C / C / C / C / Em Dm / C'' F :and that repeats too. then theres a big chorus that is very beautiful that you would like or so i'd like to imagine, and there is a part with a repetitious metallophone that sings AHC over and over, then the BASS stops and starts after some drums have been played and then it goes very dreamy but the kind of dreams with feedback from maltreated guitarspeakers would be like this perhaps, although there is no guarantee, and you can't have it back in two weeks, or ever for that matter, the true cause for concern here is more in the concept than the product. we have no name. would you feel like talking to people if they didn't know what to call you and you couldn't tell them? one of the new songs will have the new name, and that baby will grow. and there will be lots of different songs, the amount of parts and parents to them we have is ludicrous and putting 9 different parts in one song may be too much.

so we cut down and cut the songs up and spread the whole thing around before bringing it back together later, alterations will be made forever. luckily, what we do have here is the capacity for change. at any point, we can go off and write slavic traditional folk. and why not? we already did, and it's played on the accordion by the way. still. if we could never change, never ever do anything differently, we'd be worse off than the saddest man in the whole world; dweezil zappa, cursed at birth, doomed to eat pancakes with lisa loeb for all eternity. terrifyingly, amen.

force field takes form, and others

2006-10-10T15:07:00.000+03:00

we recorded a first draft of the very beginning and the end of 'force field', part one in the turned series.. the song is slowly beginning to take shape, and will possibly last up to fifteen minutes in length when we're finished with it. the other song here is a first attempt at writing part five in the series, 'meters are miles'. again, only the beginning and the end got recorded, but perhaps that will be enough for now.

tuesday was spent working on 'death suit', the insanely stupidly big lumbering epic five-part thing. at least the violin-players are getting something a little bit more challengeing to work with - think bach, with drums and feedback. and an inevitable metallophone. will post an mp3 of that too when i get a chance, and try to fix the below; the sound-quality is terrible.

1. force field - intro, verse
2. force field - ending
3. meters are miles - verse and end

meters are miles

2006-09-25T15:18:00.000+03:00

the battle to finish writing the turned series rages on. we spent sunday concentrating on force field again, the keychanges need some hard work on them and coming up with a second theme seems to be quite troublesome. jere played us an extremely beautiful piece he wrote for guitar, and we will most likely use it as it's own seperate song. so basically this is all multiplying, and four parts won't be enough.. i had a dream during saturday night in which i heard most of these parts played in a row. some bits were missing, some i just didn't remember and the rest are fading fast. i managed to write down most of what there was soon after i woke up, and the followng is from the notebook i used (slightly revised in light of the rehearsal that followed, and including ideas i've worked on with tuukka and by myself afterwards):

1/4 - force field, beginning to take shape slowly, will probably involve words with a sort of agricultural feel to them, a slowly building piece with a loud noise burst after the intro, then gradually turning more and more atonal. the parts for this in their correct order (at the moment) is:
intro: about two minutes of seemingly unplanned accents on floor tom, accordion and line 6 looper, using snippets of violin and metallophone all slowed down, with violins playing short bits of the first theme
loud part: comes in suddenly and subsides just as fast, guitars and drums (possibly two sets) have the lead here.
cymbal swell: a one-bar expanse on the first note of the first theme's bass (e)
theme 1/1: bass and a repetetive 5/4 metallophone, violins and drums slowly enter, imitating the 5/4 rhythm
theme 2/1: bass and metallophone continue, strings and trumpet veer off into the main theme, very quietly
middle eight: where trumpet and second metallophone/guitar take the lead for 8 bars. a sort of solo if you like.
theme 2: a lengthy chorus-ish part where the violins start on a hypnotic four note loop.
theme 3/1: bass, metallophone, strings and trumpet return, this time with added guitars and piano.
modulation: slowly pulling everything from an Am-key to Bb.
end: partly borrowing the end of the world or theme 2/4 from death suit.

2/4 - crocodile teeth:
verse: violins play the original keyboard line pizzicato, emily sings.
chorus: drums and accordion enter, and everything gets scrambled by a delay-pedal.

3/4 - death suit, starting to look very big, loud, epic and looming:
theme 1/1: one bar in 4/4 time followed by 8 bars in 3/4.
theme 1/2: or tangerine dream. violins play a two-part theme over and over, modulating between f and g# throughout. quietly.
theme 2/2: the same as above, only twice slower this time.
theme 1/3: also called donnie darko, the lead instruments are two metallophones.
theme 2/3: again, the same repeated, but with the higher-pitched vibes playing twice the normal speed.
theme 1/4: aka best of bach, strings and trumpet lead and the bass changes key over and over, always returning where it started from by the end of the cycle.
theme 2/4: end of the world, same as 1/4 but with the bass veering off into another direction and one of the violins playing a repetetive short arpeggio.
theme 1/2: back again, this time much louder.
theme 2/2: again, the slowed down version.
theme 3/2: still slowed down, but with a much simpler bass.
theme 2/1: and we're back at the beginning, this time with strings playing the first four beats of the rubato from left your marks in the sand over the 4/4 part.

4/4 - left your marks in the sand
intro: 4/4 rhythm, with double-bass and drums.
rubato 1: emily and iina sing and play a short vocal/trumpet bit here, regardless of rhythm.
verse: everything from here on is piano-led, apart from the very end.
chorus 1: understated and quiet, hinting at the second chorus.
verse 2: second verse differs only in having more trumpet, sax and clarinet.
chorus 2: strings enter here.
middle eight
vocal bridge
instrumental bridge
ending: return of the drums (and vocals).
rubato 2

5/4 - mox kow / end fights will probably be jere playing a compostion he wrote for classical guitar with added strings, trumpet and metallophone.

6/4 - meters are miles will be the ballad. and the only one we haven't really started proper work on. the ending will have the adjacent 1/4 notes though, i promise.

prince sings on, like some mollusc in your head

2006-09-18T13:48:00.000+03:00

yesterday's rehearsal was spent working on force field, a seemingly futile attempt to merge several unfinished parts for the song together - i'm having some second thoughts about the addition of the main piano line from moscow being used in the beginning of this first part. the notes don't seem to correspond in any sensible way and the metallophone just doesn't have the range that it requires to sound good. tuukka spent a good long time introducing a new fourth part for the song, a nice bridge that he managed to work out for violins and trumpet with essi, saara and iina. the rest of the day seemed to be a bit of a waste, everybody sitting with their instruments, not entirely sure what they should be doing.

it did occur to me that a piano part that tuukka jammed on for some time during the time we were recording the grand piano parts for left your marks in the sand last winter could be used as the first part of death suit somehow. the part sounds quite powerful as it is (but only if you use a grand or upright piano to play it), starting with one bar in 4/4 rhythm followed by eight bars in 3/4, after which it starts again from the beginning. this may sound interesting if it gradually blended in with the second part, tangerine dream.

i'm listening to three records on heavy rotation at the moment: september 000 by secret machines, 7 from the village by fields and trans canada highway by boards of canada. i'm reading kafka on the shore by haruki murakami and have recently seen my neighbor totoro by hayao miyazaki at the 19th annual helsinki international film festival. i have tickets to colour me kubrick by brian w. cook, art school confidential by terry zwigoff and tideland by terry gilliam. should be good.

p.s.
going through the four minidiscs i had with me today i discovered an extremely old version of aircrash - before we thought of using faster drums.. anyway, the link is below. emily and i sing, jere plays guitar and otto plays drums. recorded way back in 2001.

aircrash at folkpensionsanstalten

i found: recordings of sinking steamboats, hush and haunted planes/moss-school

2006-09-16T12:56:00.000+03:00

i've been going through some old md-cassettes, discovering alternate versions of many older songs played at rehearsal rooms in laajasalo and kerava - a new way to play the second half of sinking steamboats (an addition rather than a completely new take on the song), an extremely old version of hush that seems to have a certain something that the recent version lacks - work on this song seems to be constant, as we decided to replace most of my guitar-parts with violins, and the lyrics have been changing forever.. and finally, a recorded version of the fourth part in the turned series, tentatively moscow. by no means what the song will sound like finished, it gives a fair idea of what the piano and guitar might sound like together some day. these recordings of hush and moscow seem to be from late 2001, the first committed to minidisc in the front room of a house in laajasalo and the second at our first rehearsal room in laajasalo. hush has jere on guitar, otto on bass, ville on drums and myself on guitar and doing the vocal parts, moscow is otto on piano, jere on guitar and me on my usual vocal and acoustic guitar duties.

sinking steamboats a and b.
early version of mox kow.

crocodile teeth is one of the shortest songs in our roster, but i feel the lyrics are our most accomplished. the picture above is a recent drawing of our bass-player kelanen by our drummer & resident art-school student tuukka. due to continuous arguments and stupid fights while in studio around last christmas, kelanen left the band, and emily and i wrote the crocodile teeth lyric based around him and his penchant for arnold schwarzenegger impressions:

"lines are strewn across
marshes eye and pot-holes
like across your crooked stance
like across candid demands
you were our mountain of man
caricatures built in sand
a bad actor with a speech-impediment
poorly mouthed and forced in sentiment

i can't remember, much else of you"

force field, death suit, marks in the sand, moss-school

2006-09-14T19:50:00.000+03:00

as a first entry, coming up with anything sensible to say seems beyond me. i will try to keep this all updated as best i can during the time that this group is on a break from playing live-shows; this is here for anyone to find. to recap, we don't have a real name, we have played twenty shows. there are ten of us, we play all our own songs - some of which have been the same since the day we wrote them, some of them still changing.

our most recent project has been to start work on a four-part piece called turned. the third part has been ready for a long time and we must have played it to an audience nearly a dozen times by now. the whole idea is to use classical-music influences to an extreme where they become the main point of focus, leaving the rock elements in the background. the following is a sort of open plan for the four turned pieces - and a catalogue of the parts we have composed by name. don't expect any of it to make sense please..

turned 1/4 - force field. the three parts we have ready for this piece are quite similar to one another. the beginning will be very minimalistic and seemingly arryhthmical, violin notes on floor-tom accents, slowly bringing out melody from within the interleaved hum. part two of this will make it's entrance forcefully, a storm of squalling feedback and both violins playing the full leading melody - backed up by trumpet and a possible accordion. as quickly as this part appears, it quickly subsides, giving way to the leading melody played with guitars, metallophones, piano and strings. all of it ending in a lush minor 7 chord.

turned 2/4 - death suit. this is slowly beginning to take shape; we've managed to complete four parts for the piece (and more are on the way) - the first is called 'donnie darko' as it reminded someone of the score for that film, second comes 'tangerine dream' - off-kilter arpeggios on violins, modulating every two bars; 'tangerine dream' and 'donnie darko' may both end up using the same guitar riff in the background, one that makes me think of godspeed you! black emperor everytime i hear it. third comes 'best of bach', another strings & trumpet arrangement, the most honest pop melody in all the four parts and is naturally followed by the fourth section called 'end of the world'. there will be more to say about this one once we get it near finished. a fifth part has been kicking around that sounds like dub. but we might just end up leaving that out - however much fun it is to play.

turned 3/4 - left your marks in the sand. the long-finished third part starts with a jazzy 4/4 rhythm with trumpet and saxophone playing over a simple four-note bassline. this gives way to a short vocal and trumpet centered rubato, and continues in 3/4 rhythm for the rest of the song. violins and 'cello make an appearance during the second chorus and round the whole song off in a slow-building but powerful final crescendo.

turned 4/4 - moss-school. the closing fourth chapter will be a very simple ballad using an acoustic guitar and a piano as the leading instruments. the piano melody will be revisited here in full for the first time, after appearing in tiny fragments played on the violin during the first third of force field and as the backbone to the final bridge in left your marks in the sand. here it comes through in the chorus in all it's glory, backed up by violins, 'cello, trumpet and orchestral percussion. the very end of the song will involve all instruments dropping down into parallel 1/4 notes, creating a very unsettling dischord.