maanantai 25. heinäkuuta 2011

Status update

Time to fill the blog once again with some latest activities from the camp Excalion.
Last couple of months have been somewhat active but mostly what's been going on is not so interesting to write about...but the outcome of course is:

We now got more or less the basics recorded for all the demos for the next album!

This includes drums, bass and keys for something like 9 songs. With guitars we're somewhere in the half way there. Vocals for couple of those on track already! We also rehearsed a while ago one really energetic and up tempo killer song at the rehearsal space. Will surely be awesome!

Stay tuned for more news. In the next days Jarmo will sing some other songs for the demo versions and Vesa will put some amazing licks to the songs that still miss some guitars.

We'll also try to make sense of the timeplan when the next release could be. Anxiously waiting to get it confirmed!

Cheers!

maanantai 18. huhtikuuta 2011

Enter a Life video online!

Yey,

It's finally out! The music video for Enter a Life, the album opener for High Time (2010). We really wanted to do this kind of anniversary video since it's already ten years of Excalion. Wow, time flies quite rapidly.
Think this is a nice way to show that we're alive and kicking! Check the video from youtube:
Enter a Life official music video

The demo recordings are going really nice as well. If you didn't remember, we're currently putting demos together for 9 new songs! Jarmo just sang the first one of those which is a bit heavier mid tempo song. I think in general the tempo could be going a bit up from last album. Nice twists and hooks there. Damn can't wait to hear the songs recorded. Was fun to hear one of the new songs with all the instruments in it since we weren't sure how guitars will be in that particular song...Vesa sent us a message during his composing period and said "hahahaaa...this song will be Rainbow!". We were quite excited what it will be since it really has a rockish vibe while it's still an uptempo song and has really really nice groove in it. But Vesa was actually bit right. Even though the guitars were really heavy sounding...it really had this Rainbow type of vibe in some parts of the song!

Ok. Some more updates later. Now some coffee and more promotion for the new video. Hope you like it. At least you get to see how we looked like ten years ago. Some really old clips there! :D

Cheers
Henri

sunnuntai 13. maaliskuuta 2011

Demo recordings on going

Hey,

Small status report after a very intensive recording weekend.
We hit rehearsal space yesterday with Tero and Jappe to record demos for 7 new songs. We tried a new approach by putting bass tracks to the tape simultaneously as we recorded drums. We finally said goodbye to our old .zip discs and used a digital recorder. Hurray! :D

Was a blast. The songs are really tight and was nice to try out my new drumkit in the demo sessions. Had again some technical problems with the mics. Some of them always brake, don't know why? Of course was a bit of getting used to with the new recorder as well. Luckily Jappe is always eager to get familiar with those.

Yesterday we spend some 6 hours or a bit more to put up the equipment, to try the sounds and recorded 5 of the songs.

The songs all have still working titles which are getting weirder every year (the working titles I mean). Of these 5 songs, most we're bit faster songs including again some really nice and fresh elements for Excalion.

The evening was of course relaxing together with some nice drinks and pizza/kebab (what else?).

Today we finalized two last songs. The other quite heavy but slower song and one power ballad. So to conclude, the first day included quite much more bass drum hits. hehe

The next step Tero will finalize his bass lines to the songs. We got most to the tape while I recorded (Tero recorded along with me) but the focus was in the drums so that when I had good take, we agreed that Tero can easily then record later if his take wasn't as good at the same time.

But anyways. Great feeling. Songs are great, making demos is more fun now...Just then next step waiting to hear those final and of course waiting to get to the studio again for the next album!

sunnuntai 16. tammikuuta 2011

January update

Happy New Year everyone!

As you might have seen from Excalion.com, Jarmo will be appearing on a Heavy Musical on 5th of February in Turku. How awesome is that? Be sure to get your tickets for that specific act. ;)

Some update from the rehearsals as well:
We've got 9 new songs so far that are extremely potential for the next album. The songs are extremely versatile. Some really fast stuff to slower songs with huge choruses.

We also updated our equipment a bit for demo recording. We used to do all our demos (since last 5 years) with a 8-track recorder from ancient history, utilizing zip disks that are not sold anywhere nowadays. We've lived with a constant fear that some of the disks break (or just start to malfunction as usual) during the recordings and we would have to start all over again. But those days are gone since now we have an actual digital recorder for demo sessions. We will hit the rehearsal space in a couple of weeks to record a few more of the new songs.

Sorry for the delay with the new video. The timeline we had in mind was a bit optimistic since the producer is extremely busy with his dayjob and we want to have a bit of a extra work with this video. ;) So be patient.

See ya later!