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View this studio diary with pictures on the Katatonia Facebook page. Become a fan.
After the midsummer weekend, it was time to get back to biz. The recording facalities down in Varberg were changed to David’s own Ghost Ward studio (off the record referred to as “the rathole”) which is located in a suburb north of Stockholm. This week’s schedule was rhythm guitars, so I stepped into the picture together with Jonas and David to find a heavy distortion sound to fit Daniel’s great drum production.
We recently entered a brand new collaboration with with Laboga amplifiers from Poland and we endorse both their Mr Hector and Aligator models. Obivously, the entire Monday was spent fooling around with different configurations of mics, speakers and knob settings. In the past, this procedure could very likely end up taking more than one day, but this time we found the “sweet spot” pretty much right away. Laboga deliver fantastic quality and I believe we nailed the optimal setup for this record. We’re talking low bottom heaviness, a mid crunch register which we like to refer to as “the drill”, all perfectly pushed through the active EMG pickups of my wicked Mayones axes. The coloring and balance between the amps different equalizers and different distortion levels shows also in the clear high end resonance. Even full 6-string chords ring out beautifully seperated without turning to noise. It sounds expensive and pro. When we came back on tuesday to start tracking we were disturbed by a foul smell. To enter the studio, you head into this kind of sketchy house located in a industrial area, take a couple of stairs down to the basement and enter a steel door that leads to a corridor where the studio is located like a rathole in the wall. But on the outside of the steeldoor there’s this kinda elevator room with a sliding door, sometimes open, sometimes shut. The smell couldn’t have come from anywhere else but there. We’ve had our suspicions before and they turned out to be true. None of us ever investigated what’s behind the door, until now. A flashlight and a camera revealed that this tiny room is being a residence for bums and junkies and their grotesque needs. What was reeking as we passed by turned out to be piles of excrements and urine on the floor… Yay! We learned that in the upper building is a couple of floors with apartments used as “temporary solutions for temporary people”… Put two and two together. We’re recording in a rathole, in hell! The following days were just all out busy and pretty much looked the same. Get up at 8 am. Wait for David to pick us up in his Opel and then a quick stop at Coop forum (huge grocery store chain) for some breakfast. Walk down the rathole and pass by the stench of bums which is a wake-up call if your’re still snooze mode. Track guitars. Lunch at Maestro. Track more guitars. Leave at 10 pm and go home to check emails (no internet in the rathole) and try to have a life for 2-3 hours. Get some sleep. Repeat. Today’s saturday and all rhythm guitars are done. The album has twisted into form and we’re only hours behind schedule. Sunday is a day off and on monday we’ll start with all the semi-dirty and clean guitar sounds. It’s all coming alive! /Anders
View this studio diary with pictures on the Katatonia Facebook page. Become a fan. The last cymbal hit of the drum session still ringing in my ear… I have a very good feeling about the whole thing. The playing first and foremost, and the sound is beautiful, the acoustics are ace! Plus we won’t have to listen to nothing but drums 10 hours a day anymore. Daniel should be proud. We haven’t had the time to do anything else as we’re on a pretty tight schedule with this album. We saw some horses the other day and we celebrated David’s birthday with cake, beer and various medications and oh, our new collaborator Frank Default (more known as the creative force behind the previous single’s remixes and ‘Unfurl’ production) came down to help edit some of the drums and made sure we didn’t fall behind schedule. So the time has come to wrap up and get outta here. Feels good to have a few days at home in Stockholm and celebrate midsummer. Next week we’ll move on to rhythm, lead and clean guitars. The foundation of darkness is now rock solid. /Jonas
View this studio diary with pictures on the Katatonia Facebook page. Become a fan. After a long nocturnal car ride through heavy rain and on frog flooded roads, me, Daniel and David (recording engineer) finally found the lonesome path leading to a studio pretty much located in the middle of nowhere. We got the gear into the studio, had a quick lookaround and were then heading for bed. Both me and Daniel were (are) sick and since drugs are a big part of rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle we went through our medicine stash and found a big bottle of cough surpressing stuff that would also provide extra good sleep… yummy. Day two was all about getting the drums up. Provided with a beautiful orange Gretsch kit Daniel started to play around with his setup. It took some time. Putting up all the microphones took some time as well. By midnight we could finally hear the sound of the drum kit through the studio monitors. Me and Daniel had a walk around the studio building and found: 1. an electric fence (that we wanted to but didn’t have the guts to touch) and 2. two cows (that we wanted to but didn’t have the guts to touch). Time to hit the sack again with some sleep providing liquid. Day three, four and five can be compressed into one word: drums. The ultimate instrument. Daniel is playing better than ever despite his sickness and the new material is shining even more with real drums on the songs. Difficult parts (to my ear) are smoothly executed and easy going parts are… easy going. It’s interesting to discuss with Daniel about the direction the drums are headed for certain songs and parts, since this is the first time we’ve actually met and listened through the new material together… that’s the way we work, folks. Exciting times ahead! /Jonas
We’ve been very busy lately writing and completing the material for our 8th studio album and we’re proud to announce that Katatonia will enter the studio this summer, starting in a studio in the south of Sweden with drums courtesy of Daniel on June the 10th. We’ll then continue on the remainder of the sessions in a studio here in Stockholm further through july and wrap it up in august. We’ll keep the info short for now as we’ll launch a studio diary to give you all the in-depth information and details on the album making incl album/song-titles, audio teasers, album artwork and also our tour plans along the recording process. We can already confirm that initially 13 tracks will be recorded and a selection of 11-12 songs will make it onto the album. We got a few big surprises to reveal and we’re confident this material is our most varied, diverse and possibly strongest shit all together on one and the same album. The release date is set for late October on Peaceville.
We’re aware of the fact that Sweden doesn’t seem to get a hell lot of Katatonia on the live front and it’s been bloody ages ago we were up in the north (Umeå – 15 years ago, Sundsvall – 5 years ago), so now the time has come to head even farther north and visit another city for the first time at the festival Minus 30 Grader @ Kulturenshus, Luleå on March 14th.
The new gig will be held on March 28th at the 1Club venue, Moscow, Russia. All tickets bought for the cancelled 17th January show are valid for the new date. Also new tickets for the show are now on sale.
We’re very sorry to announce that Katatonia has unfortunately been forced to cancel tomorrow’s (saturday January 17) gig at the Tochka club, Moscow, Russia due to contractual problems and visa complications. We’re already looking at the possibilites of rescheduling this gig asap to rectify the situation. All questions about the tickets, refunds and the rescheduled date etc should be directed to the promoter JC-Sound, which you can reach here. Once again, we’re sorry for any disconvinience and dissapointment this may have caused you. Thanks for you understanding.
We are pleased to announce our first time trip (as musicians and not charter passengers…) to the tourist attraction island of Cyprus. Come kick in the new year with us on January 3rd. Tickets are on sale now. We are also excited to make our return to the massive continent in the east. Our last trip, with gigs in S:t Petersburg and Moscow, marked a live-highlight for the band in 2005. With the Katatonia season in full bloom, we can’t think of anything better than coming back to Moscow for a one off show on January 17th. Tickets are on sale now.
We can hear many question….
And you might rightfully think so, our 8th album (and the last in the contract with Peaceville) should have been done and put out “ages ago” if things would’ve gone according to plan… It’s crazy how fast time goes by these days and that doesn’t help us much when inspiration runs dry. We’ve been meaning to enter the studio on many occassions already since two years back and I think we ended up cancelling booked sessions twice. Although it worked successfully every time in the past, it just got us stressed out and pushed us into a phase of writer’s block. From this we learned we better not book anything in advance as it stands, but focus on completing 100% of the material, be perfectly happy with what we got and first then hit the studio. It seems we might pull things together for maximum devotion this time as all current and previous distractions are now gone. The Summer festivals are over and the level of live gigs for the next months are put to a minimum and Bloodbath - our Death Metal sideproject’s new album is done too (to be released on Otober 6th, check it out or all our hard work was for nothing hah!). So what about the music? Bits and pieces have been collected ever since The Great Cold Distance came out. It’s just that we’ve been trying too hard, been thinking too much about the sound and direction. How can we top this and how can we change that. We’ve been stumbling around offroad looking for the answers and it ended up being a long walk. We don’t find it meaningful to trace your own footsteps back from where you came, but we rather find the first nearest exit to the same road up ahead where we’re at to get back on the map again.
I wont give away any hints just yet about how it will sound, but we hope to give you more light on the progress of this untitled embryo as we get closer. What’s certain is that we’ve found a good equation to work with now and that my friends is that it’s all about the 8th studio album and the autumn. Here comes the Katatonia season…
Katatonia will appear on the following festivals this summer: Jun 20 – Hellfest, Clisson, France |
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