History and genesis of “It’s All Suggestion”, our new release as Echoes From A Great Distance
Ladies and gentlemen, after a long time of hard work, finally our new release “It’s All Suggestion” is out on Spotify and Deezer.
This is not just our “first album” but it’s also the first release in which I took care of all the guitar riffs after Teemu’s departure, and it’s also the first release with my great colleague and friend Andrea Ferrantelli, who recorded all the bass tracks and most of the backing vocals.
Right now we are working as trio, me, Andrea and Henri Flink taking care of the drums during our live exhibition.
And we have also an official site in which we write all our upcoming gigs.
But let’s see the genesis of this album in the track details.
Us And Them
The first track of the album, a sort of progressive song in three part about two different worlds.
I started to work on this track four years ago – at that time the line-up was me, Teemu, Zsolt and Janne.
Main inspiration of the composition and the lyrics was a theatrical performance I saw during the Creative Night at the Suhe Church, where I got baptised.
The name of this performance was “Kontrastit” ( “Contrasts”) and it was an extraordinary representation of two different scenarios.
The first scenario showed the hard and painful trip of the refugees to reach a better place, the second one showed the modern and civilised world but full of paradoxes and fleeting happiness, a collection of different characters: loaded rich men, social justice workers, pin-up girls aiming for talent shows, drug addicted teenagers and mothers under antidepressants.
The performance ended with the protagonists of the two world “colliding” each other in a mutual exchange of accusations.
This song is a sort of reproduction of “Kontrastit”, especially in a very important situation like the Syrian refugees’ crisis.
The first part describes both with the music and with the lyrics the hard trip of the refugees, while the second part – dominated by a bass riff and a distorted monologue – describes the modern world, a world represented by the “perfect family”, made of three characters of the play: the loaded rich man, the pin-up girl and the suicidal teenager.
But the “perfect family” members are not the main characters of the second part, at the end appears also a new character: the drunkard. This is one of the dominant characters in almost all the album, a sort of symbol of degradation.
The second part then ends with a noisy feedback that opens the third part of the song, or better to say, the epilogue of the song: a tirade against the “us and them” mentality, also inspired by a song from The Cure with almost the same title and theme
Originally the song was 9-minutes long, but it’s been shortened to 6:36 minutes after a lot of work especially on the second part.
Sovereign Citizens Of Tinfoiland
The shortest track of the album, a post-punk song making fun of the conspiracy theorist, especially of the so-called “sovereign citizens”.
The name “Tinfoiland” is a playword between “Tinfoil” ( the tinfoil hat, the emblem of the conspiracy theorism) and Land
Suggestion
The title-track of the release. A song in two verses that describes how suggestion works often in some churches, denominations or sects.
I think that one of the greatest problem in some pentecostal/baptist/non-denominational churches is that most of their members are ex-addicts or criminals or drunkards.
And I want to say, it’s always amazing when a drug addict turn to Christian faith, the problem is that faith alone can really erase their past sins but don’t erase totally the symptoms of addiction, which remain often for the whole life, especially in the brain.
And often, when these ex-drug addicts start to preach, they tell about strange dreams and visions saying “coming from God”, mixing them with conspiracy theories and sci-fi stuffs ( like vision of the Rapture). The question is, where do their preaching really come from ?
This is what I want to say in the first verse of the song.
In the second verse I recorded my voice two times.
Here comes again the drunkard figure, a drunkard that act himself as a climate change expert: this is a reference to Teuvo Hakkarainen, a Finnish far-right deputy known especially for his drunkenness in public.
Both verses have a guitar riff that I took from “Jenseits der Tur” a song from German post-punk band Fehlfarben, but differently from them the riff starts with G insted of Em, this thanks to Andrea’s bassline.
After the two verses the song exploded in a outro in which I sing “Suggestion” four times and then it comes a guitar solo and a noise swathe making a bridge for the following song.
Prophets And Clowns
Opened by Suggestion’s noisy outro, it’s a 7-minutes post-punk track, one of the first track of the album I wrote.
The guitar riff of this song came during a dream I made almost two years ago.
This song is the continuation of Suggestion, and it focuses especially on the “end-times” psychosis, which is unfortunately typical in some churches and sects, especially in the second and third verse.
In the first verse there’s still the drunkard, but this time it changes to multiple drunken figures ( “the horde of drunks”) shapeshifting from human beings to pigs.
This “metamorphosis” is a sort of surrealistic representation of all the drunkards I see in the stations Helsinki and Leppävaara, and it could be a quotation that goes from Circe, the sorceress to the Pink Floyd song, “Pigs”
Between the second and the third verse appears a chorus in multiple voices which emphasises the verses “Give me a reason to believe you”, originally the verse had to be “Try to scare me about hell” but I changed it for different reasons.
After the third verse appears a very long growing bridge that culminate in the final explosive outro with me and Andrea singing the final verses.
The ending is a noise carpet created with my Slö Reverb, opening for the following song.
The Killing Fog
The name is a reference to fog that happens always in the Northeast of Italy every Autumn and Winter
This song is also named “Soundtrack From Winter 2001” and is a tribute to Korova, my first band where I played.
Both verses, chorus and outro come really from an old Korova song even if I have to say that the original song was slower, longer and the outro was more noisy, unfortunately I lost the cassette of those sessions.
The lyrics tell all the story about my first band, I was 16, it was my first step into post-rock, I used to have an Ibanez Talman and an old Park amplifier.
We used to rehearse in a house in the middle of the nature and one day it came a snowstorm that almost caused a blackout and everything was covered with snow and it was impossible to drive. I still remember I slept at my bassist’s place at it was very cold.
We had just one concert, at a pep assembly, then we broke up.
At the end of the song it appears the “Choir Of Dead”, it’s a backward recording that comes from an happening and I have to say, I was there.
It was Summer 2016 and I was invited to play in Rautatientori with my friend Pilvi by the Joosua Missio” collective, a group of fanatics who I met a lot of time when I used to busk in the station of Korso.
But before us it came an orchestra named “Kemin Jokke ja Uusi Laulu” whose average age was something like 70 years old and for one hour they played the same rigmarole, it was really depressing and disgusting at the same time.
And the worst happened when our turn came, we played just four-five songs and one of the group, “the weelchair preacher of Hell Is A Boxing Ring”, was ready to cut off the mics before we ended.
That backward recording comes really from that Kemin Jokke exhibition, and it’s the opening for Requiem, the following song.
Requiem ( A Feedback To Destroy Everything )
The continuation of Killing Fog, this song describes how useless is thinking always to the past and the “great old times”.
The emphasis of “nostalgia is a cancer” comes from a 7-years ago interview to Giorgio Canali, Italian alternative-rock veteran, from Radio Bombay, an Italian web-radio. In the interview Giorgio declared perfectly that:
I’m really fed up of these nostalgic stuff(…)I don’t feel any nostalgia at all and I don’t want to think about it, I’ll feel it when I’ll be on deathbed, when I’ll be dying I’ll be thinking “oh how great were that times” like all those f**king grandpas.
And I don’t understand why this nostalgia feeling is present in also younger people than me, who haven’t really lived those years, it’s miserable, you should look forward.
(Thinking about those periods’ protagonists) there’s someone who died, someone who is still alive, someone who disappeared and someone who is still here, really, never talk about the past, never, past brings misfortune (…)
Nostalgia SUCKS !
“Old times” syndrome is also a thing that is very common also among Conservative Christians emphasising the end-times stuff.
The third verse is a reference to the old EFAGD formation, when Ville was at the bass and Vesa at the drums and we were at the point to become a shitty jazz band.
After the verse come the “feedback to destroy everything”, a 1-minute noise carpet in which Andrea give great contribute with his effected bass, playing the Requiem notes.
After the feedback come the last verse that go to the main album theme, the suggestion. In the verse there’s a zombie-preacher talking about conspiracy theories in front of a comatose audience. It’s a reference to Martti Ahvenainen, a Finnish evangelist who came last year at the Siion church and all his preaching was about a fantomatic “muslim invasion” in Europe.
Faith
The last and longest song of the release, but also on of the first that I wrote, with Prophets and Us And Them.
This song is the final answer to those who suspects if I’ve lost my faith in God and how this is very important.
In both of the two verses I talk about my faith experiences, the second verse refers to fact happened last year: I was performing during an One Way evangelising campaign in Matinkylä ( South of Espoo ) and it was really stormy that the wind almost destroyed the gazebo, but everything went greatly, despite the weather.
The end of the song is a post-rock digression of 4 minutes.
Particular is also the bass part which Andrea recorded with a fretless bass from Turin and sent me right at the last day of the year.
