I'm now on a two week tour with Ugress, making new friends. I'm keeping a daily journal in the blog.

This is a Rikskonsertene tour, early in the morning at primary schools in the foresty heart of Norway. It is a bit different from my regular shows, which are usually performed some time around midnight in a loud dark club. (Or in an empty festival tent.)

I'll be documenting the expedition as it unfolds. There's a daily tour journal with reports and photos in the blog.

First day of tour, just a transport day.

We have rehearsals early tomorrow morning in Nydalen, other side of the country, 8 hour drive. I am traveling with a bunch of equipment, can't fly, so we're driving over the mountains today, staying the night in Oslo.

Jens (tour manager, driver, sound, tech, my sanity, usually fired once an hour) was working at Hole In The Sky metal festival all night and I was simultaneously working with final preparations. We decided to leave late afternoon, allowing for some morning sleep.

Picked up the rental car, my instruments, and got going. The car is (Jens!!! what car is this?) a Ford Transit, a white van, lots of room for equipment and sound systems… and no room for my very stiff passenger seat to recline. It's kind of a dull car really.

It was an uneventful drive; I've done that ride too many times, most exciting was a terrible meal at a roadside stop, and The White Van Ahead Of Us That Looks Like Us That Never Disappear And Got Seriously Annoying To Look At All The F**ing Time.

At least I could take a lot of photos that looked like it was photos of us.

We arrived in Oslo late at night, the last few hours in tedious rain. I crashed for a few hours, and got up around 5 to do the final edits for rehearsals.

Track Of The Day In The Car: Nirvana, In Bloom. 

I'm playing primary schools in Telemark, Norway, two or three concerts each day. I was hoping to post an entry every day, but the first stretch has so far been insanely busy. First today (fifth day) I have some hours at the hotel at night, catching up on the diary.

So here (above) goes as many as I manage tonight.

I wrote the music for a new comedy web-series that premiered yesterday. "Ah, så det er SÅNN det er" is a Norwegian parody of the endless instructional videos flooding the internet.

You can watch the whole first episode over at ABC TV. (It's in Norwegian.)

All parts are acted by comedian Calle Hellevang-Larsen, of Raske Menn. Director is my long time music video ace Magnus Martens.

It has been (still is) a speed-run job, I have to write the music in my lunch break and between my REM cycles. I can't afford the timely luxury of directly scoring everything continuously as it is cut, so I got some preliminary shots and lots of green-screens and then wrote them a library of cues to pick from when editing.

Talking a bit with Magnus we decided on a "sound", and which characters and situations needed their own themes. There's also tiny bunch of stings and specially scored situations.

It was great fun working on this. Probably because I am not allowed to spend any time on it: Early on we decided I should use as little time as possible on each cue, a kind of "one-try-only", too keep within the overall aesthetic (the stock matte's are REALLY noticeable, and there's "deliberate green-screen" in a later episode that looks REALLY bad). Also, the music is really subtle and mostly not there for comic effect.

I don't know how they use my music within each episode, until I watch the final cut. In this first episode it was interesting to see their choices. Mostly as expected, although I note with glum satisfaction that the cues I think suck, they don't use. At least I seem to KNOW when I write bad stuff.

There is a total of seven episodes, and a new one will premiere at the ABC website every Friday. There's also a Facebook page. My favorite episode is the third one, "Urtehage", with time travel and multi-clones...

Post-apocalytism! How I miss thee.

This excellent collection by Pink Tentacle, with wonderful abandoned and forlorn art by TokyoGenso, is bad medicine to my poor soul. Which is stuck in an ever-efficient, ever-mundane, never-nothing social democracy.

But, as a side note, wIth all the Japanese tourists strolling by my window during summer, I suppose this is actually what Tokyo looks like during summers.

(There's more at the TokyoGenso link but the PT link is nicer to scroll.)

Mostly worked on the new tracks that I'd like to try out live. This means working on tracks where the "falling in love" part is over and it's just good old WORK, hammering things into shape.

Thur, July 8th

Not much work on album material. Spent most of the day preparing the live show for the SommerØya festival. They've been kind of hard to get proper communication with so I have no idea what hardware and setup I will meet, which means I have to set up and bring a pretty all-encompassing setup. Not a big problem except it costs more prep time. A little annoying but this is kind of normal. Live touring sucks a lot of time.

Fri, July 9th

Playing at festival. There is a longer, separate expedition entry for this day.

Sat, July 10th

Staying over in Oslo for Sunday, having a short break from working on the album. Spent the day documenting yesterday, then some hours for myself relaxing with a book, before catching up with friends. Went hiking with my previous manager Roar, who still functions as sort of advisor and strategist. When we have the chance we head into forests, talking about music and future plans. This time we talked mostly about long term plans, not so much the imminent album. I'm right in the middle of the process, everything's a mess and just making sense inside my head, not quite comfortable discussing it without having something proper to show.

Sun, July 11th

Returned back home with an early flight. Again, as mentioned in Fridays festival post, trouble with my instrument flight case, but this time a very helpful attendant. He didn't know how to handle it, but again showing him SAS' own web page got things moving. Dear me that company, head doesn't know tail. But the attendant was very friendly and helpful. I don't mind the overweight hassle so much if the person behind the counter is there to actually help me make my flight. Got back home, spent some hours shifting my gear back ready for album process, then watched the world cup final. Kind of disappointing final game after a nice tournament, maybe because I didn't care much for the final teams.
 
Mon, July 12th

Somewhat office day, cleaning up, paperwork after the festival. The rest of the day I spent trying to get back into groove, looking over all my work so far and mostly just entering a state of mind about the album, have it all in focus. Only one distraction this week, on Wednesday, then I can give the album full focus for a few weeks.

Tue, July 13th

Continued work on some of the previous sketches. One of them suddenly changed direction completely, from a rather militant rock-electro thing towards more casual and loungy dub. I like it better the new way. I like how things can change so suddenly, and grow from there. But now I'm one short in the electro department.

Wed, July 14th

First half of the day was tour planning. I'm off for a Rikskonsertene tour this fall and we have to start preproduction and planning. Spent a few hours doing strategy and practical details, then I had a meeting with my sound guy Jens, talking problems, solutions, possibilities and production. Second half of the day, I sketched up a new track, and this one gave me a good feeling; I prefer to have at least two or three really strong tracks on each album, and this is a potential strong track I think. I might struggle a bit to integrate the sound of it into my story, but thankfully as I'm building the whole world at once, it shouldn't be a problem to adapt the world to what I need.

Thur, July 15th

Continued working on yesterday's track, spent almost all day on it. Things are just flowing right now, I heart days like these so much. They are so rare. I turned off all communication devices and stayed focused on the track, keeping everything about it in my mind; the sound and mix, the music and structure, the idea and concept and potential future directions. I worked for a whole day and then went for a bike ride to rest my ears and mind, but took audio and musical notes on the phone. Back in studio continued working on the track, and late at night I was out of juice, but was satisfied, the track could be good. Now I need some distance. Rewarded myself by installing the new Reaktor 5.5 public beta to have some fun and play with new software. It looks neat.

Fri, July 16th

Up early. Wanted to fix up a track for one of the characters, I've already written a track for him (or, it), but I'm not happy with that so I decided to write another. Spent first half of the day writing this track. I've mentioned earlier there's a backstory, and characters. I have no idea if this story will be there in the end product, but it helps me build the album as a world.

Sat, July 17th

Just a very regular long day of working. Took the evening off, had some beers in a quiet pub and read foreign newspapers (an easy way to travel).

Sun, July 18th

Kept working. Went exploring, almost killed by a steam train. Back and kept working.

Mon, July 19th

Tiny office day, there are some routines to do, but so few I'm skipping most of them. Mostly tried to assess the current album status. I can afford two more weeks immersed in the album, I will spend the first few days this week trying to get some kind of overview, big picture, and then the final ten days wrapping things up within this larger frame.

Tue, July 20th

A bit of a schizo day, was supposed to work on the overall picture, but ended up writing yet another new track. Kept going back and forth between working on both, which really wasn't optimal but got some things done anyway.

Wed, July 21st

Writing this now, yesterday's evening and this morning have to do some non-album related things. Some of the office routines, web stuff, and communication tasks I was supposed to do on Monday finally caught up with me, got to get these things done. Wrote the blog posts, killed a bunch of emails, blah blah world attention, thanks, bye.

Now back inside my head.

The Ugress - Collectronics album is now out and available with all digital music services.

This is a compilation of previously released singles and EP tracks. There is also Nightswimming, a previously unreleased vocal track with Christine Litle.

The album is available for streaming right here on ugress.com. For hi-fi freaks, the album is available in lossless at my own store over at Bandcamp.

Others:

Amazon, iTunes, Spotify, Wimp, eMusic.

A few days ago I went on urban safari, exploring an old abandoned railroad track. (Spoiler: It wasn't.)

I'm staying much alone lately, working on the next album. I have a lot in my head, prefer to keep to myself as much as possible, just write and think and eat and sleep. Exploring remote areas on bike and foot are nice breaks, I bring my lunch and just kind of zombie around in deserted areas.

On one of my longer bike trips this weekend I came across an old and rusty railroad track, a segment of the Bergen-Oslo line replaced by a longer tunnel. Great! I could follow it some distance on my bike by a dirt track, but eventually the track continued alone through tunnels, along a steep mountain side by the fjord. So I parked the bike and set out on foot, with my camera and handheld recorder.

I walked for some miles on the track, through tunnels and steep canyons carved out of the mountain side. There were lots of great sounds to sample, it was a windy day but deep in the canyons it was quiet, just lots of eerie drips and spooky drops. Splendid reverbs and weird tonal soundscapes from all the water running. Some places along the track there were piles of rusty nails and rotten boards, making for  soggy haunting sounds. It was very meditative, quietly exploring, listening to soft mountain walls and banging out tones on moist wood.

After a while I came upon a short, open segment, with a nice view to the fjord. In the distance I could hear a remote factory whistle echoing between the mountain walls, and I thought "hey that sounds almost like a train, that's nice for atmosphere". Depending on the wind, sometimes the whistle was really loud, and I decided to sample it, would be a neat addition to the eerie tunnel sounds. I climbed up on a short cliff by the track to get better clearance from the walls.

I was adjusting the recording level, kind of hard to find a proper gain, the whistle was suddenly superbly loud and clear, sounded like it was just around the bend...

...and then. It actually came hurling around the bend. Embodied as a fucking real life full size full speed thundering Harry Potter steam locomotive.

My jaw dropped to the mossy ground decorated with rusty nails, and I completely forgot about sampling - but I had the sense to grab my camera and shoot, or else I wouldn't even believe myself this actually happened. So there:

The train zoomed past me, so close I could have touched it. It seemed very, very real. There were people inside. They were as surprised as me at seeing someone real. It made a lot of noise. The ground was shaking. Then it was gone and all was quiet again.

I was like: WAHT TEH FUU I'm in a steampunk time machine movie did you see that DID YOU SEE THAT it was a real steam engine and vintage wood wagons and it sped just past me it makes a whistle sound and it was so f**king awesome did that really happen I could almost touch it and it probably weighs a ton or five and where did that come from oh my god maybe there are zeppelins too where are they! where are they!...

Then it dawned on me; I got the shivers, the track is NOT abandoned. At all. If this had happened one minute earlier, or I had been one minute later with everything I did in my life, I could be dead now. I have no idea if I could have escaped that monster in the tunnels or canyons, or if I would have even heard it, or if it could have stopped, if it had seen me. That was many tons of iron moving really fast along a very given trajectory, there's a physics formula here that most likely does not compute to my advantage.

This track is so NOT abandoned. And there are tunnels in all directions how on earth am I going to get back to my bike? Must I stay here for the rest of my life, die of starvation on this puny cliff of safety from that sneaky ninja locomotive? Can I eat pine? Grass? For how long? Are there mobile coverage here? Does it matter, because did I bring my mobile and can I phone in an airlift? NO.

Any lesser person would probably lie down to die, but I laugh in the face of fear. Or rather - I have an album to make. So I tiptoed back towards the recent canyon, stood absolutely quiet for two minutes, trying to listen for a new train, then ran like a shit-scared chicken through the mountain pass. Eventually on the other side I found an opening in the steep hills, and could climb back through the woods to my bike. Sometimes in the distance I could still hear a train whistle, but no train never passed me again.

I am so not going into a train tunnel again.

Back at my bike I quickly pedaled myself back into inner city safety, and had my lunch in a quiet graveyard park. Suitably, contemplating life and death. Realizing some of my current and regular album struggles are kind of petty. I am actually lucky to be alive to tell this tale. Mostly because of my own ignorance. Though, how awesome would it have been to end up as "met his end by steam locomotive"? 

That WOULD have been an awesome end.

I am taking a short break from album production and playing live with Ugress this coming Friday, at electronic music festival Sommerøya, Langøyene, Oslo.

It is a nice opportunity to try out new material, and get a real life sanity check. I've been inside my head writing music for quite some time now, the fresh air and loud beats would do me good. According to the schedule I'm playing at high noon(!).

More information, tickets and practical details at the festival website.

Got a neat package in the post the other day:

Supersanger is a new compilation CD with music from Norwegian kids TV. I've got two tracks on this, from the Kometkameratene show: Reise (from the episode "Travel") and Kovalova (from the episode "Language")

The album is out and available, Spotify, Wimp, iTunes, Amazon, Platekompaniet.

(We're working on a way to publish the music from the second season of Kometkameratene.)

I have six weeks to make an album and I need as many of those 3 628 800 seconds as possible to survive this daring expedition. I will therefore ease up a bit on website and general social activity.

This is just a collection of singles and selected tracks from the myriads of EPs and web releases I did between 2005 and 2010. There IS an exclusive track, Nightswimming featuring Christine Litle. Because I'm a poor cynical bastard who thinks slapping an exclusive track on something increases the special snowflakability of it.

But really the point of this release is quite simply a strategic move, get more of my material into streaming services. So... that's it.

I'll update with a news item when it's out everywhere.