This may be the last ØSC jam session at the Black Tornado studios as I am leaving for Portugal next year. I will build my own studio where we will jam in the future, I hope.
I tried to get nearly the same line up as we had for the Different Creatures sessions but it was not easy. Jonas, Alex and Mathias all could not make it. Hasse is coming from Norway and KG and Jonathan from Stockholm so with me, that is 4 of the original 8. Tim from Agusa will play drums and Jiri (Fri Galaxe, The Univerzals) will come to play some bass. Magnus from Mantric Muse will join as well on synth and guitar. I have a new module for the synth that I will for sure use called the Teleplexer! Sabine will come and take pics and film the sessions.
Tim will use the in house drum kit so maybe Lars can set it up in advance and mic it up, the same with the Hammond and Leslie. This will save us a lot of time and maybe we can even have some jams on the Friday! I am very excited about this.
The video camera is all dumped so we can erase the hard disc and record the entire session again. It would be great if we had two camera’s but we will manage with only 1 if we have to. We actually managed to get 2 cameras.
Day 1
14:30 I made the first Indian veggie curry (beets, parsnips, carrots, celery root). Sabine has arrived after a difficult journey where her car broke down. I have to go to the airport to pick up Hasse and Tim.
17 All went well with getting Hasse and Tim and everyone is in a great mood. KG and Jonathan have arrived now and the 2nd Indian curry dish (Salmon with goji berries) is done as well with brown rice… We will eat and go straight out to the studio.
18:30
We are trying some different things this time, like putting the drums in the isolation booth. The set up went pretty smooth but Tim was bored and really wanted to play badly but we took our time to really get everything correct. He plays inside the isolation room but we leave the door open. When we played back the first jam, there was very little bleed, only a bit of bass. That is good.
It is going to be loud but not super loud. The cymbals were getting to me so I will probably wear ear plugs and then it will be quite hard to hear Magnus. We will see.
Magnus and Jonathan have very special music pits! The OSCar sounded great but only has one sound at the moment unless we can get the factory sounds reset today. We will try when we get there..
Instruments:
KG- Vermona Synth, Doepfer- Dark Energy, Dark Time, Actura- Mini Brute, Stratocaster, Sitar, effects pedals
Jonathan- Theremin, guitar, effects pedals , violin, farfisa, Lap Steel, one string instrument from Vietnam.
Magnus- Guitar, effects pedals, Moog Synth, OSCar
Hasse- Bass, Laney Head, Marshall cabinet,effects pedals
DoumDoum drums (set of 3), Talking Drum
Jiri- Bass, Fafner Head, EBS cabinets, effects pedals
Dr Space- Octave Cat, Yamaha CS.10, Custom Modular Synth
Tim- vintage Ludwig drum kit
20:00
Looks like we will have 18 channels total..Only 4 for the drums.
Channels
Drums 4 channels
Guitar and all instruments (Jonathan) 1
Guitar 2 (Magnus) 2 channels
Synths 2 channels
Bass 1
Bass 2
KG guitar/guitar
KG synths 2 channels
Dr Space Synths 2 channels
Doumdoum drums 2channels
18 channels
22:20
All is set up now and we had a strange jam to start things off but maybe some cool stuff but it was mostly just everyone testing out all their gear to make sure it was all working.
I think we will make a lot of very cool music. We will talk about the styles, etc… and see what happens.. People are very open minded.
Day 2
10:40 We all got up early (Hasse,Tim, KG, Jonathan, Sabine all stay at my place), had breakfast, washed (some of us!) and now we are waiting for Lars. We said we come between 10:30 and 11.
12 The first jam was just me, KG on sitar, Jonathan, Tim and Hasse. No sign of Magnus or Jiri yet. This was a very nice jam.
12:40 Magnus is here and he and Jonathan are trying to restore the factory sounds for the OSCar. Not working yet. KG is preparing a really cool electo-kraut groove that we will try to jam on.
13:45 Called Jiri and woke him up so he will come as soon as he can. We had another jam but it did not really seem like we caught the groove that well. We will see. Some parts were very cool though. We tried a sort of desert blues thing with KG playing some great guitar.
15 KG and I are struggling with the drums and cymbals being too loud with the door of the isolation room open so we will try to put the drums in the PA and close the door. It will feel more isolated for Tim for sure but we need to try this. Jiri is here now.
People seem tired (had not enough sleep and too many beers last night!) but all are really happy and we talk a lot about styles of music and what we should try next. We are talking about trying an Afrobeat style jam.
16:22 The Afrobeat jam was super cool but went into a totally unexpected area. Wow…. I still feel like we are not catching the groove and some people are really holding back.
17:02 This last one might be the best one we have had so far and it even went into some reggae parts. Magnus is very low and we all have a hard time to hear him.
The last jam started with just KG on synth, hasse on bass and Jonathan on violin. I joined next, then Tim, then Jiri and finally Magnus. I think the best part of the jam was the first part. We have quite a few jams with two bass players. I wonder how this will be to mix. They play great together though.. Their tones are quite different.
There was another short jam with Jonathan on bass and Hasse on his guitar.
19:32 We just had some pizza and a break as Tim’s arm is bothering him. We talk about doing another Digestive Raga. Some joints are being smoked and beers all around. People are in a really good mood. Maybe this will loosen up Magnus a bit so he can really let it rip…
20:20 A very cool jam with three basses (Jonathan, hasse and Jiri).Great synth stuff from KG. Tim is really struggling now.
21:00 We had one more chill out jam with no drums that we pretty crazy…. We call it a day now.
Day 3
10:45 Lars is here and everyone but Jiri and Magnus. We will not wait for them and just start to play.
The first sitar jam today was amazing. Wow… Jiri has arrived now.
12:15
We just had two jams and one was this really cool like soul groove and the other was based on a repetitive electronic sequence from KG..
13:10 Still no Magnus but this last jam was incredible. Very cool farfisa and great guitar from KG. Jiri was totally grooving on the bass..
14:02 The idea was to try to do a sort of doom drone thing again but it just went in unexpected places and the addition of sitar was very cool. Magnus is here and really lifted this piece up. We will go out and take a band foto, while there is still some light!! It is very cold and windy outside.
15:20 Now that was real, high energy space rock and Magnus totally kicked ass….. Intense stuff.
16:40 We had one last really long jam with the idea to play something like the opening track on Dark Magus by Miles Davis. It was super cool. Tim’s arm is really hurting so no more for this session.
It was great. We have 121GB of data… around 10 hrs of recording. Wow…
Photos by Sabine Pottien.
The quote of the day
“ Forget Dr Space he is not MEGA-Important!” Ingo “Rock this Town” booking Germany