SunriseAve ITALY

Au Revoir et merci Paris! from SUNRISE AVENUE BLOG

Au Revoir et merci Paris!

by Sunrise Avenue on Sunday, 07 November 2010 at 21:16

I am on my way home from Paris where I spent the whole week with our dear genius maniac producer Jukka Backlund. Was a superb trip!

It’s been a while from my last blog. So much has happened and I actually thought about writing a couple of times in the past weeksd, but it’s been strange and tough creating the music and putting the pieces together and I had to focus all my energy into even more important things.

 Where we are now…

 My gut feeling was kind of right. I kind of knew the songs for the album would be composed 98 % until the end of November. Now we are putting the production together with the two producers (both Jukka;) and there is very much to do, but on the other hand we got a lot of time and we know what we are doing.

 We just finished 4 new tracks with Jukka this week and I am totally happy about them all. I spent last night on my sofa bed in Jukka’s kitchen listening to the finished demos for 3 hours. And I accidentally drank one third of Jukka’s favorite whiskey bottle. I was so carried away by the tracks. And I deserved it after this week. It was like the good old days, Jukka & me and our adult jokes. I am happy for the rest of the guys that they weren’t there ;)

 Tomorrow we will go to Stuio Petrax in Finland again with Jukka I (so much about my days off) and there are some tracks that I already know will sound great. We have produced a couple of tracks with the new Jukka too, and I am totally convinced in his skills & his team. I personally can’t wait to finish a track called “I don’t dance.” It’s so perverted ;) But a straight rock song and the title that fits me. Tomorrow will be more about instruments (Riku, Sami, Raul) and therefore it’ll be an easier day for me.

 In general, I think we have found a great overall sound. Pretty rock and powerful with some fresh elements and a lot of programming. I feel very much “at home” with the stuff we will release next year.

 I have booked the album mastering for January. That means it will be printed for you people then if nothing strange happens. December and January will be a lot of mixing while we are on tour and on Holiday after Christmas and if we just get the artwork and stuff ready, everything is ready to be released on the first quarter next year. There are so many songs, I’d even actually like to give out for free right now because I would want people to hear them. Unfortunately you must wait. There are a few EMI & Universal guys who’d kill me ;)

 (Or they would do the same thing to me that Uganda Pastor thinks Barak Obama wants to bring to Africa as human rights. Sorry, This inside joke for Jukka was a MUST)

 We have two major record companies working with us. In the beginning I was a little worried how that might go. You know when there are two big players, both with their own interests and the Ego stuff and all, but it seems to go ok. The greatest thing about the next step is, that everyone has agreed that Sunrise Avenue album#3 will be very heavily Artist driven. This means we will make the music and musical choices with the band and we also have the biggest role in selecting singles and video treatments. That is the way. Of course the great team around us will help as much as they can, but this time it’s great to have more free hands to give you people something real. Let’s hope the mood stays as it is.

 I’d be very happy with the whole SA world as it is even with just releasing an album soon, but we are so damn lucky to even have a tour soon !!!!! I can’t wait. We have some great new ideas how we can all enjoy the evening together again. And of course we will do some of the stuff we did in March. Remember that the acoustic album will be out in many new countries soon!!! Check your local dealer!

 Osmo will join us for the whole trip. That’s cool. Maybe Osmo could play some of his stuff on our show too. His album will be released in GSA countries next year, so that’d be cool. We are also bringing the two FLAMBOY girls to do some stuff on stage with us in Hamburg. The girls just released their debut album in Finland (Brilliant pop music!!!) and we decided to reward the Hamburg audience for selling out the first night so fast by bringing the girls on stage for both nights. It could have been possible for the whole tour too, but the girls weren’t available for the whole trip.

 It’s always been my kind of a dream to have female backing vocalists on some of the songs and now we got to do it. Finally!!!! The girls already made their first performance in Helsinki at this Fashion TV show with us, and we were totally blown away. I hope everyone welcomes the ladies along with warm hearts. They are at the beginning of their career and this will be a very cool experience for them. I love giving the chance for other Finnish artists to try bigger stages. It would be the coolest thing to help someone’s career explode outside Finland. I think all of the artists we have taken along (Poets of the Fall, ClarkKent, Osmo and soon Flamboy) have enjoyed your support and found something new from these trips with the SA family.

 We will play a version of Flamboy’s “Bitch in Me” together with the girls and that is kind of funny having us guys singing about bitches in us ;) It will be a great tour, I am so sure.

 Now I will watch a movie and try to get some sleep. I must stay awake until 2AM for a phone call and tomorrow they start at Petrax at 10 AM. It’s cool to be busy ;)

 2010 has been probably the strangest and also the best year in my life. A lot of pieces fell into the right places on my career and also on my personal life and I have been on the road making music with Fantastic people all over the planet from Los Angeles to the countryside of Finland and from Paris to Tokyo in late December. I am one lucky son of a Finnish loving mother. Of course there have been times when I have been super tired or clearly with too much stress, but it’s all a part of this game and you must take it all if you wanna play the game. And now I have a feeling that finally after some years in the business, I start to really know what I want. At least a bit more day by day.

(my mom is actually angry at me because I don’t play / give her all the new demos…. MOM please !! You’re the best. ;)

 I hope you are all doing fine and I can’t wait to see everyone on tour again soon. Thank you so much for buying so many tickets already. It’s super great that we don’t have to play alone every night ;) It’ll be FUN!!!!

 Love,

 Samu

 PS: Not a bad Start for HIFK. Kibe on Ihan liekeissä!!!!

PPS: There are some friends from Finland coming over to the Berlin show. These folks are pretty bad party animals, so I recommend everyone wear a helmet that evening. Poor you ;)

 PPPS: Remember, it’s father’s day next weekend (at least in My country)!!!!