I guess I wanted to create one version of ”the perfect album closer” with this track. Slow but steady build to a cathartic release of emotion and power and a quiet haunting outro. For some reason it reminds me of the songs I used to write in my young and reckless post-grunge era maybe twenty years ago. But unlike those songs of old, this song has unwavering determination and knows exactly what it wants to say. 

Obviously as the album closer of a concept album this song needs to tie up loose ends and…

If yesterday I told you about the most painless and fast production experience with ”Plastic”, this song is the exact opposite. It took ages and ages to get right which probably isn’t much of a surprise either as it’s a 7 minute long prog juggernaut. Still, both the arrangement and production took a long time. 

There’s an early version of the track that was released on the latest ”Banding Together” benefit compilation curated by Blow Up Radio that featured some of the arrangement but most notably a more…

This is the last song that I wrote for the album. I initially thought the power pop aspect to it was a bit much at first, but I hardly had to mix the whole thing – it just magically locked into step. And when something just comes together so naturally you don’t mess with that! I’m pretty sure this song required the least mixing which always speaks for the song itself, in my opinion. 

If there’s a tag line for this album it’s probably ”I wish I was as useful to myself as to machines” which is a line from…

This song sounds the most like Rage Against the Machine on this record – if you only go by the lyrics. When you listen to the song musically it’s about as much removed from RATM as you could think. It’s a ballad featuring piano and even a glockenspiel solo, but juxtaposition is something I absolutely love love love in music and you’ll find this throughout my back catalogue. I both can not and will not help myself from combining a beautiful ballad like this with lyrics about ”mindfuck” and ”rape”. I even…

Conversations with an Algorithm is actually what the album was meant to be called before I came up with the term ”botify” (only to later learn I wasn’t the first one at all). This is the second track on the album and I really couldn’t decide whether to release this or ”Scream into the Void” as the second single. I decided against this one for no particular reason. 

This song is about the loneliness social media can make you feel instead of the opposite it’s supposed to be doing. ”All night wide awake in…

This song is about burnout, plain and simple. The chorus has your colleagues wondering ”Oh, my word, but the boy is dead!” when you finally break down from exhaustion – while you probably could’ve used their help earlier as stated in the opening lyrics: ”I feel so strung out on my own, no pulse, no vital signs to show”. 

The song is about anyone feeling overwhelmed and crushed under whatever load, usually work, I suppose. In my case it’s specifically about the debilitating wave of exhaustion I felt in…

Sometimes you really don’t know which songs are going to be singles from an album – which songs are going to be the ones you use to tell people about the album, and which ones to make music videos of. Certainly not while you’re recording them… Unless you have fans from Argentina tuning in to the live streams you’re broadcasting your album writing sessions on! From the get-go Eduardo from Buenos Aires professed his love for this track over the Youtube chat and I was honestly surprised as I didn’t think too…

Hey all you beautiful people!

I hope you have a wonderful start to this week! We're taking a break and spending Christmas and the start of the new year with our families, so the next Fresh Start Mondays blog will be out on January 11th. So I'll gather everything between now and then in a neat little package for you!

MONDAY, Dec. 14th

• these lines you're just reading. How awesome of you, thanks!

TUESDAY, Dec. 15th

• CWAA LIVE album session "Writing Bass Lines" on Youtube. On at 9.00 Finnish time…

Okay... So let me just start off this Monday by admitting how completely I was able to outfox myself: Last Monday morning I was ABSOLUTELY NOT planning to be announcing a new album on Friday and even less so streaming the first songwriting session live on Youtube! What the hell, Jon?!? 

On Tuesday I played the hitherto last "Songs on Tuesday" Facebook livestream. Last, because Facebook apparently decided to not share me going live with our page followers (almost) at all. And then I realized I'd had enough…

Okay. So, a few weeks ago I noticed a headline on NME.com: ”Is Spotify’s Discovery Mode just asking acts to work for ’exposure’?” (Highly recommended read, by the way!) Now obviously for a small indie band like ours Discovery Mode immediately sounded intriguing. Maybe this was a great opportunity to get our music in front of new people? I don’t mind putting in the work as long as there’s a reward I’m happy with at the end of it, right? Instead, after reading the article I just lost it. I’d completely had…