Recording at Abbey Road today!
I was in London in May co-ordinating a study visit trip to meet songwriters and record producers with the last year students from the studio- and rock musicians programme at the Division of Music at LTU. In one of the studios we bumped into to a very talented Swedish sound engineer with an amazing track record called Thomas Juth and we got to know each other. Over dinner a few days later he told me about his life long dream about renting the Abbey Road studio two for a day and that he was determined to do it one of these days and also inviting his father and brother who are also Beatles loving musicians. He said he had thought about inviting some songwriter, musician, producer kind of person to be part of the session and also to bring in a song to record, and it turned out he had me in mind! It’s easy to guess how long it took to convince me to do it. I had of course said “yes” already before he had actually had time to ask me the question.
Proudly presenting the album cover for Soundshine!!
Writing the songs was done over a period of years and years, recording was done over a period of almost a year, mixing was done over a period of a few months, and mastering was done in a day (see blog post from the mastering at Abbey Road), but with all that done in late spring of this year – it turned out I was far from finished with the making of Soundshine. I obviously needed an artwork as well and hadn’t been able to get going during the recording process. I had set the goals high. I wanted a striking image that also reflects the music and the title of the album. I contacted a few people with a cry for help… I told them I was in desperate need of a “beautiful, colourful, cool and timeless cover art with a pop feel!”. I ended up working with an old friend of mine, Pelle Hökengren, who is a professional graphic designer working for his own company. Pelle is also a musician himself with a background as the guitar player of famous Swedish band Trance Dance.
I have previous experience of working together with him since he made the artwork for The Merrymakers debut album “No Sleep ’til Famous” all those years ago back in 1995. He kindly offered his services again and we decided to get going. We had an initial creative discussion about what we wanted to achieve and decided to build a miniature of some kind and have a photo taken and that’s it. What to put in the miniature we weren’t so sure about. However summer came in the way. My wife and I had planned a vacation trip to Thailand and Pelle asked me to be on the look for “stuff” to put into the picture. I came back with a bunch of small flowers, a big fake sunflower, and some miniature animals including a frog, a fish and a bird which Pelle thougt was “usable”. However, Pelle was quite skeptical about the need of my miniature clowns with musical instruments, the fat Asian couple in hawaiian skirts and sun-hats or the elephant that I had also bought. But so was my wife (she’s scared of clowns!) so that was mainly a relief. Pelle got going, found help from his creative daughter Jonna with the construction work, and towards the fall he could present the finished result which today I’m proud to present for the first time to the world. Ladies and gentlemen – here we go – the album cover for Soundshine!!!
I have promised that the album will be out in 2011 and it’s a promise I will keep. However only in Japan! Check back in a week for an update about the Japanese release that will be on December 7. People outside will have to wait for another three months. But in any case – it’s getting closer!!!
Please feel free to post your comments on the design as long as they are full of praise, excitement, cheers and applause!