Yule tide coming
The Christmas season is drawing near. It’s been a weird autumn by Swedish measures, with spring-like weather and no snow anywhere – not even in the far north. It’s starting to get chillier now, but by this time everybody’s usually wearing long johns and knitted scarves to keep the cold out. I try to avoid the cold as much as I can if I can help it (unless I’m out in the ski slopes, but that’s about once a year around February/March). But what’s worst with the winter time in these parts is the darkness. The days are so short that you hardly get to get a glimpse of the sun before it descends again around 3 pm. It gets kind of depressing, and it’s got a bigger impact on me now than it did a few years ago. Just another of those things that gets tougher with age, huh?
In any case, I’ve had an eventful month with new releases from both The Genuine Fakes and Hong Faux. TGF’s Liner Notes has been well received and it’s now out on iTunes, Amazon, Spotify etc. If you’re interested we’ve posted a couple of reviews over at thegenuinefakes.com. We’ve completed about four songs by now for the next album and we’re going to continue working on it to make sure it gets out sometime before summer. Judging by what we’ve got so far, the album’s going to turn out better than we hoped, and it’s going to sound amazing!
The Hong Faux debut album The Crown that Wears the Head saw the light of day on Nov 16. We’ve yet to see if it’ll make any sort of impact. The goal is of course to create some sort of buzz and see if it can lead to a proper release on a fitting label – first in Sweden and then elsewhere. For now, it’s a vinyl exclusive and you can get it either by attending one of our shows or by ordering through our Bandcamp store. We recently signed a deal with management company Pironi here in Sweden, and we’re hopeful that our collaboration with them will take us to unprecedented heights. 
It’s the first management deal for me, personally, so that in itself feels like a great achievement. It feels like I’ve been very close with many projects before – including my solo project, but this is the first time I’ve managed to cross over and actually gotten someone on “the other side” hooked on a project to the point where they were ready to actually make a proper commitment. So, I’m keeping my fingers crossed and hoping that next year will bring lots of great things to the table. I wouldn’t mind doing a tour with one of my own bands and doing the whole thing like it used to be done back in the heyday of the music business. It’s only wishful thinking at this point, but what’s different this time is that it actually seems feasible. Exciting times indeed!
Last week I lent my guitar skills to the Swedish pop wiz Vincent. My good friend Mattias Franzén (Miike Snow etc.) with whom I play with in the presently dormant project I Am the Flood (and who has also jumped in on keyboards in Nutmeg a few times) is in the band and he was kind enough to think of me when they needed a stand-in for their regular guitarist. Vincent is all over the pop charts here in Sweden and he’s a songwriter that I have the utmost respect for, so naturally I couldn’t turn down the chance to play with him. He broke through back in 2007 with the song “Don’t Hate on Me” and has a number of hits after that including “Miss Blue” and “Baby Hurricane”. He’s now out promoting his second album Godspeed. I’ve never played that kind of chart-oriented pop music before so it was a fun challenge for me. Mind you, the live versions don’t sound much like the recordings, performed, as they are, by a classic rock band set-up. But the approach to the music is a lot different than it is in a regular rock band. The sounds has more “air”, if you will, and with no distorted guitars to disguise any flaws you really have to be on your feet and know your shit in order to pull it off. But that’s fine with me, I think it’s that much more fun if it comes with a challenge! I hope I get the opportunity to do more shows with him and his great band next year.
Vincet at Metropol, me on the left
I write this from my old home town of Hultsfred down in Småland. I lived here between 2000 – 2005 while I was studying economics and music management. During that time I was involved with a Christmas show here in town, which added a sweet bonus to the student allowance in those days (and actually financed my debut album Throwaway Moments). This year the show has outgrown the city and is moving to a big place called Konsert & kongress in Linköping (which is one of the larger cities in Sweden). As it happens, they needed me back by the piano this year and so I’m back here now for a week of rehearsal before going to Linköping to do no less than ten “Golden Garden Christmas” shows. It’s great to hang with the guys in the band again – the line-up hasn’t changed much over past six years. So I’m going to spend the next few weeks working with this show, and hopefully getting some creative work done in the hotel room in the time between. Got some new Hong Faux riffs to write and some solo songs to arrange so no sleep ’til X-mas! 
Autumn recap
I finally have some time to get you up to speed. Sorry for the lack of updates (as usual…).
I’ve had a really intense period, with lots of stuff going on in all areas of life. Not least in the area of music. Here’s a breakdown of recent events.
The Genuine Fakes have been awfully busy in the studio working on songs for the second album. We’re making headway, working through the songs one by one. By now we’re finished with tracking four songs, and so I’m mixing those tracks as we continue to track the rest. We’re way more efficient this time around than we were on the last album. We both know how we want the record to sound and we know how get there – we don’t need to go through the whole trial and error process once again.
On top of this, we thought it was time to revisit the old album sessions and go through those songs that ended up not getting included on The Striped Album. So, I sat down and remixed them and sent them off to Anders Hellgren (formerly of The Merrymakers) for mastering. The result became Liner Notes, and since 11 November you can stream it in its entirety over at Bandcamp, as well as buy it if you like. It will be out on iTunes, Spotify, Amazon etc. in time for Christmas.
In other news, Hong Faux is progressing at a pace I don’t think anyone in the band would’ve been able to predict. What started as a fun side-project just eighteen months ago is quickly starting to become a lot more than just that. Last week we signed a management deal with Pironi, who also represent Titiyo, Hästpojken, Le Kid, Sugarplum Fairy and a bunch of other well established Swedish acts. I’m pretty excited about all that’s happening, ’cause in all the years of hard work in different bands, no band has gotten this close to actually reaching out on a broader scale. As I wrote in the last blog post, we’ve put out a single and video, and in just two days we release our debut album The Crown that Wears the Head on vinyl via my own record label Pristine Music. It’ll be available exclusively on gigs and through Bandcamp (we take pre-orders now). We chose to hold off on the digital release for a while, just to see if we might be able to get some kind of deal with a record company with a bit more muscle. Hopefully that’s something that our new management can help us out with. Time will tell!
In any case, last week we made an appearance at Umeågalan in front of a couple of thousand people. We stood for the rock segment of the event, sort of the odd one out among acts such as Jill Johnson, Säkert! and Charlie Caper. It was a great oppportunity to showcase the new single though, and we did our utmost with the five minutes we had at our disposal. This week we’re doing two shows to celebrate the vinyl release – Scharinska in Umeå on Wednesday and Marie Laveau in Stockholm on Thursday. It’s free admittance to both shows, so if you’re in the neighborhood on any of these dates feel free to bring your friends and drop by. At the Stockholm show Strängen from Hellacopters will be deejaying, so it’s going to be a rawkin’ night More info about those shows at hongfaux.com.
One more thing – a couple of weeks ago I did a gig together with David Myhr. He had his first solo gig in Stockholm, and he asked me to join in on lead guitar and backing vocals. It was just the two of us in the intimate cellar space of Southside pub here in Stockholm. I’m a big fan of David’s and his upcoming solo debut is a fine piece of pop craftsmanship. Keep a look-out for it early next year!
New single from Hong Faux
I see that once again over a month has passed between blog posts… 40 days to be precise. I’ll get you up to speed soon, but now I just want to make a quick announcement. Hong Faux‘s full length debut entitled The Crown that Wears the Head was mastered yesterday by Magnus Lindberg from Cult of Luna (who also mastered both of Nutmeg‘s albums) and we start taking pre-orders for the vinyl release this Friday – October 21. More info on hongfaux.com.
The first single is called “Feign Death to Stay Alive” and will see a worldwide digital release on iTunes, Amazon etc. on October 25. Already today you can enjoy the video we made for it. More exciting news soon! ‘Til then, much enjoyment.
Rockbjörnen and me
Last week I went to the Rockbjörnen Awards ceremony (one of the bigger Swedish music awards) at the theme park Gröna Lund in Stockholm together with Karl Martindahl. It was great fun and I met some pretty interesting people, and saw some really drunk celebrities at the after party where Electric Boys played. You might’ve noticed I posted a few pictures on Flickr (check the right hand feed if you’re interested). All in all it was a good night, and it was fun to see Graveyard do a mini-set as well as The Ark, being as they’re doing their very last shows this summer before they call it quits after 20 years. The whole thing went on just a bit too long, though.
Here’s a pic from the red carpet, courtesy of Aftonbladet.
Photo: Robin Lorentz-Allard
Suomi and Studio
This weekend was spent in Turku, Finland with The Genuine Fakes. We got invited by a powerpop club called Flavor of the Month (named after the Posies song) and took the ferry across the Baltic Sea. It was our first gig outside of Sweden and to our surprise it was one of the best gigs we’ve had. We hadn’t done a proper gig since our release party in January so we thought we’d be pretty rusty, but all those years of grinding in the rehearsal studio have paid off, ’cause it certainly didn’t feel like eight months had passed between gigs. We were very well received by the audience and a lot of people came up to us afterwards and told us it was the best gig they’d ever seen on that club. One person even went so far as saying it was one of the top ten gigs he’d ever seen anywhere! Makes me proud as hell over the band. Hopefully we’ll be going over there soon again and play one of the bigger clubs in town.
We also got acquainted with two Finnish acts; The Sugarrush and The Wonderminers. They both put on good shows, and I was particularly impressed by Petri in The Wonderminers whose vocals and guitar playing had a certain Jeff Buckley-esque quality. He also was kind enough to film us when we did Beyoncé’s “Irreplaceable”. Check it out below.
This week I’m moving into a new studio. It feels great to get out of the apartment and get a more controlled environment to work in. It will also enable more frequent work on the next Genuine Fakes album. We haven’t gotten as far as I’d wished at this point in time, but I think that we will be able to make some headway now. All the drum tracks are done, so now we just have to work through the songs one by one. We aim for a May 2012 release, so we best get crackin’!
Small talk with NRGM
My alter-ego Joey Fake recently did an interview for Finnish pop blog NRGM. You can read the original article here, and the uncut, English version on The Genuine Fakes’ website.
Hong Flow
As August draws to en end, I’m definitely in the thick of it again. The peace of mind I had at the end of my vacation has been replaced with the usual focus and stress . The past few weeks have been mainly spent on recording and rehearsing with Hong Faux. We’re close to finished with the debut album – we’ve got some keyboard and vocal overdubs left and then we’re sending the whole thing away for mixing. Last week we did our first ever festival gig in Sweden at Eksjö Stadsfest, and our performance was very well received by those who chose to stay around for our gig instead of heading over to the main stage to see Mustasch. We did an interview with a local newspaper as well, which I think will be published later this week.
This week will be dedicated to Genuine Fakes activities. On Saturday we’ve got our first ever gig in Finland, so we’ve got some rehearsing to do in preparation for the event. I look forward to playing some powerpop again – it’s been a while since we had our last gig since we’ve been focusing our efforts on recording new songs for our second album. The plan is to be done with recording before Christmas so we can get the record out before next summer.
See you in Turku on Saturday!
Busy days in the studio
So, vacation’s over. After a few weeks in the countryside it feels good to be back in the game. This week I’ve been busy in the home studio working on new songs together with Karl Martindahl. It’s been extremely productive and I’m very happy with the result. They’re pre-production demos but I feel that they’re actually good enough to release on the spot. I’m psyched about the songs we write together and it’s going to be interesting to see what our collaboration might mount to – the songs are strong candidates for Karl’s solo album. He’s got his own studio that I will be moving into at the end of the month. I’ve been meaning to move the studio out of my home for a long time, not least because it’ll probably make me more productive. I also think it’s good to have a “job” to go to, and separate the work from the home environment. It’ll also be easier to work in the evenings without disturbing my wife when she comes home for some peace and quiet after a day of work.
Tonight I’m going over to Nik’s place to work on the Hong Faux album. We’ve got some vocal parts to sort out. I seriously think that our debut is going to be absolutely fantastic and I’m excited about what the future might hold for the project.
My home studio
New Laptop
After much consideration I decided NOT to move over to Mac after all. I feel so familiar in the PC environment that I don’t really see the point of making the switch – regardless of what most of my friends and colleagues have to say about it. So, I settled on the Sony VAIO VPC EB4X1E/BQ with a full HD screen and Intel iCore 5 processor. It also has a Blu-Ray player and a numpad (which is convenient for short commands when recording). I’ve spent the past three days updatingt, getting rid of pre-installed junk software, installing all my music programs, optimizing and tweaking Win7 and transfered everything I need from my old HP DV5 which has been my workstation for the past two and a half years. It sure is taking a helluva long time to switch computers! Anyhow, I’m really happy with the new PC so far. I’m going to put it to the test over the weekend, trying to record some stuff with my EMU 0404 USB soundcard that I used for most of the overdubs on The Striped Album.
Sony VAIO VPC EB4X1E/BQ
For those of you who are interested, here are a couple of useful links for optimizing your computer for audio recording:
The Moose Experience
Today I went to a moose farm outside of Åre called Millestgården. It was an extraordinary experience and I want to recommend everyone who’s passing through Åre on skiing holiday or whatever to go there. Though Sweden’s famous for the big moose population (around 350 000 in the summer before the hunt begins) you don’t really get to see them up-close since they usually keep to themselves deep in the forest – unless you hit them with a car. I learned today that there are 8000 traffic incidents with moose every year. A crazy number! This particular farm had four adult moose and a four month old calf that was very shy and extremely cute. My dad and I and five other people went out to their compound and hung out for a while, feeding them with their favorite branches and flowers – and potatoes. They just love potatoes – it’s like chocolate for the moose. I could go on and on about it, but you best check it out for yourselves.
Now vacation’s over. Tomorrow I take the 8 hour train ride back home to Stockholm. It’s going to be a busy fall and winter!
Here are a couple photos I took at the moose farm – one of the calf Tor, and one of his dad Artur:
