Thursday July 12th

This morning we did the final touches... A couple of strokes on the piano, a background vocal here and there, and that was it. The album is recorded. It has been a lot of hard work, but we're really satisfied with the result. Now we're sending everything to New York, where Tim is gonna mix it. The plan is to also have it mastered there, Tim had some good ideas for great mastering studios.

The album might be recorded but there's still a long way to go and the blog will stay active. We'll inform you about cover art work and the further process in making this album happen. We'll post more photos and hopefully videos very soon.

Later

Mikkel / Barra Head

Wednesday July 11th

We worked hard and fast today. We did a lot of guitars for Some Wars, for From Hope Comes
Doubt and some for Common Ground. We got Jakob's percussion takes which sounds fantastic by the way, and got them added to the sessions. Then vocals for Legitimate, vocals for Accept
The Risk and some vocals for Gradiska... and then off to sleep...

Mikkel / Barra Head

Tuesday July 10th

It was nice having some days off and getting a bit of distance to the recordings. Arvid went to Roskilde Festival, Jakob recorded some percussion on his own and went back to work and I spent time with my wife trying to organize things for our baby, which is to be born pretty soon. But now I'm back on my own here in Hamburg, and it feels good to be in Ton Hotel again. The songs sound fantastic to my ears! I still need to do a couple of vocals, some guitars here and there and maybe even an occational piano part... we'll see. Udo and I decided to just take it easy and do whatever comes to mind. We started with One By One, which is probably the song on the album that sounds less like anything we've ever done. We added some electronics to it and it's almost a danceable tune now. It was quite hard getting the vocals sound right for this, but we finally got a decent take... Actually it was great, but just so hard getting it sound right. After this we did vocals for Iron To Skin, which is more aggressive... It was great to yell those lyrics out and we got a super take. We also recorded some guitars for Legitimate, and after this we were too tired to work any longer...

Mikkel / Barra Head

Tuesday July 3rd

Udo and I spent a lot of time with technical stuff making rough mixes of all the songs for Jakob. He needed them to record some percussion tracks to back home in Copenhagen. We also got some good stuff recorded though. We recorded vocals for Somebody's Floor and One By One and some guitars here and there. The rest of the day was spent doing back-ups. At this point it is clear that we will not be done in time. The delays we had in the beginning of the recording period have made the last days pretty stressful, and you just can't make a good album if you're feeling stressed out. Udo, as the incredible kind man he is, has promised us that I can come back two or three days next week to finish things off. We need to do a couple of vocal tracks and some guitar. This way we will get to relax a couple of days and clear our heads before we do the last vocals and finishing touches. I'm looking forward to a break. I'll be back with the blog next week!

Mikkel / Barra Head

Monday July 2nd

As I mentioned earlier Udo has been so kind and given us a couple of extra days in the studio. Jakob and Arvid needed to go back to Copenhagen for different reasons and Nagel, the most incredible helpful friend ever, rented a van, drove them and our equipment to Copenhagen and came back to Hamburg the same night. He even went for beers for Udo and me... We can't thank you enough for all your help, Nagel!!!!Udo and I got some good stuff recorded. we did vocals for Idiot On Treadmill and Common Ground, and we did some guitars for Somebody's floor. Udo is great to work with. He has some cool ideas and of course he knows his way around the Ton Hotel studio. We worked until we couldn't keep our eyes open anymore...

Mikkel / Barra Head

Sunday July 1st

Arvid and Jakob partied hard last night... I heard come home in the morning at some point.
As it turned out I could have partied there with them, since we didn't do any vocals. This was Tim's last day and he prefered to have as much basic tracks done, so we did guitars for Common Ground and some small bass parts that we needed. Unfortunately we will have to do the rest of the recordings without Tim, since he's going on vacation with his family now. But Udo has promised to help out and he's a skilled producer and engineer, so we're in good hands. Udo came in the evening and we played around with some of his great electronic stuff for One By One. It sounds like nothing else we've ever done, but still it's really cool...

Mikkel / Barra Head

Saturday June 30th

Now it seems a really long time ago, but at some point this spring we decided it could be fun to play a show in Hamburg while we're here recording. It seemed like a great idea at the time but now that we're a little short of time in the studio, suddenly it did not seem so convenient. We worked at the studio through the afternoon with some bass for Common Ground and vocals for Undermine, but we didn't get a whole lot done before it was off to the Übel & Gefärhlich, which is a pretty cool venue. It turned out to be a really great evening. The nice guys in the band Sport was on the bill too and opened with a great set. Then we entered the stage and it actually felt really nice to loosen up a bit, not worrying about little details for a night and just enjoy playing these new songs live. We played a mixed set with both new and old songs, and while the new ones were fresh in our memory, the old ones were a little more shaky. But all in all we played quite ok, I think. It was packed in the room and among all these nice people were our friends from Delbo and from Sinnbus who travelled all the way from Berlin to see us. Thanks so much for coming, guys! It means a lot! Nagel once again worked incredibly hard making things as nice as possible for us. Jakob and Arvid stayed for some hours at the Übel & Gefärlich listening to the DJ's for the rest of the night, but I had to go home and take care of my voice. There's a lot of work to be done tomorrow.

Mikkel / Barra Head