Japan - here we come!

Around this time next week, I and my fiancée are on a plane to Narita, Japan. After having been to the US (San Fransisco and New York) three years in a row we figured it was time for something different. I've always been interested and fascinated by Japan, ever since I ordered my first Lazy, Bow Wow and Flied Egg albums from Heavy Sound Records. Then when we (Locomotive Breath) finally got a deal with Avex Records in 1997 we figured there may be a chance to get our asses over there. Didn't happen. So, when planning our vacation my fiancée suggested Japan. Great idea! The trip was quite affordable and so are the hotels (about same, even a bit cheaper, than New York). Fortunately we have some friends to help guide us in this mysterious country (Thanks in advance to Naoko Furuhashi, Mitsuhiro Nishida and Yasu Fuji).

Our (Overdrive's) Japanese label Soundholic has set up some interviews while I'm there (Burrn!!, Captain Wada) which will be great. My friends Mitsuhiro and Yasu have promised to find us some nice record stores in Yokohama and Osaka. The only concern may be overweight, but there's always the option of posting some of the purchases back home.

Last weekend I spent in Stockholm with Micke "Nord" Andersson and his lovely wife and author Karin Alvtegen. Mikael and I are writing songs for his forthcoming solo album. We managed to get five songs roughly demoed and stylewise we ended up somewhere between early Aerosmith, AC/DC and Robin Trower with a twist. Writing with Mikael is highly rewarding!

The Constancia album is now mastered and ready, we're just waiting for some input from the label on which song to use as bonus track, plus we still have some band pics to finish up.

New recommendable stuff I'm listening to:
ELECTRIC MARY - "Down To The Bone" - Thanks to Joe "The Groovayard Dawg" Romagnola for puttint me onto this gem!!
ROGOSONIC - "Leave The World Alone" - Great riffing Americans!
TY TABOR - "Balance" - What can I say? Ty rules as always!!
COLDSPELL - "Infinite Stargaze" - One of the best releases so far this year!

Recording again!

The last two days I spent in the studio with Mikael "Nord" Andersson. We're currently recording the guitars for the forthcoming album by SALT (we may change the name, though).
I used my Hughes & Kettner Trilogy head, through a 4x10" Marshall cab (the same one that was used on the latest album by The Rasmus)¨and a TS9 Tube Screamer. The guitars were my two True Temperament neck guitars (Gibson Les Paul and an Epiphone Strat) and my Fender Strat HW1.
I'll start recording the solos next week.

Today we also received Beau Hill's final mix of the CONSTANCIA track "Save Me", which sounds really good! We've sent out four tracks to four different engineers/producers to try and decide what sound we would like on the album. They are as follows:
"Save Me" - Beau Hill (Ratt, Streets, Winger, Warrant, Alice Cooper etc)
"Wish I Could Fly" - Pontus Lindmark (Planet Alliance, Cloudscape etc)
"Blind" - Pontus Norgren (The Poodles, Talisman, House Of Shakira etc)
"I Never Said Goodbye" - Pelle Saether (Node, Locomotive Breath, Zello, Zeelion etc)
When we've received all four tracks we'll put them up on our MySpace (www.myspace.com/constanciamusic) for people to vote on which mix they like the most.

Over & Out