Oh, hi! How ARE you doing? I ask because I've figured out a way to open up for comments on this damn blog. Things are moderately OK over here, I suppose. But. The album-stuff keeps dragging out and I'm about to go nuts and have become somewhat of an asshole regarding the whole process. However, we are seeing more and more green bars in the studio. No, we are not on mushrooms, it's the system we have on Kenneth's computer to see how far we've come, you know, by the colours of the folders on the computer; we paint them green in order to point out that, hey, this is pretty good. Speaking of pretty good, we've actually had a couple of pretty good days and we are not far from starting the recording of vocals on a bunch of tracks – an absolutely horrible stage, comparable to the last days of a romantic relationship. This is the where the separation phase begins for me. The only pieces of gut-wrenching, skull-fucking, annoying pieces of shite that's left to do before that final, god awful stage, are solving a drum problem or two and re-recording some plague-ridden guitars, oh, and I fucking have to re-write some gangrene lyrics too – which i HATE. If writing lyrics is having to endure a biopsy, having to sing them is receiving the terminal diagnose. So basically, if I die before this album is done, I'll kill myself. All this talk serves to vent my frustration, of course. Whenever I feel this level of artistic AIDS I remind myself that the material is actually still pretty strong, and the reason I get worked up or bogged down is because I actually still care – a fact I hope will eventually be reflected in the final result. So uhm....... yeah... basically.... Both Kenneth and I will probably have to see a therapist after this is done – a fact the buying public MUST recognize and PITY by appreciating the end result. Ahem!

Hey, so I've signed with danish label Crunchy Frog. It's totally awesome! When Beta Satan played Roskilde in 2008, we had a pretty jolly time after the show, where we'd walk around the festival area, swinging a bottle of Jack Daniels exultantly, being relieved, having a job well done under our belt. I remember Kaare – of Beta Satan – kept bugging Crunchy labelboss Yebo by telling him that he totally should give my new songs a listen. He promised he would. So, being thrilled with the work Crunchy has and is doing for Beta Satan, I sent him a bunch of demos last year and he and the office was all like 'damn boyfriend, this is great – let's make a god damn hit record' – and I was all like 'damn bro, that's too cool, lemme just write a couple more dope tracks for yous, cuz I'm on to sumthin' awesome' – and so I did. And here we are. I'm proud as can be!

However, the joy is also tinged with a pinch of sadness, as this means that I am departing from Morningside Records with whom I've been for 7 years or so... Jesper Brodersen has been a totally good guy to me and my bands over the years, and he has invested time and money in my stuff and he has always been an ideological, no-bullshit-beacon to me. So it kinda bums me out. My very best to Jesper and the wonderful artists on Morningside Records!

3rd Tsunami and Jesper Frydenlund will continue to maintain the booking department of this corporation... which is cool!

In other news: the single will be mastered next sunday! I think the mix is pretty good by now. But, honestly, I can't tell anymore as I've listened to the song 500+ times. You sorta loose perspective, but luckily Kenneth is as steady as a rock and has worked relentlessly the last couple of days to mix the track. Apparently, the first song is the hardest in the mixing stages because you have give shape to the ideas you have for both the track itself, but also to the entire direction of the album. God, I hate mixing. It is the single most annoying phase of recording an album – which is itself pretty effing annoying! I become so unsure of the entire project and my songwriting and my musical abilities... yikes! Luckily, when this is over, I'm going to France with my friends Klaus and Clauern.

Oh fuck, i almost forgot! Cabin Fever is no longer the name of the band. Now it's The Malpractice. I'll elaborate on this some other time.

Best!

Ragazze! Che notte!

Hmm hmm. Going to mix the lead single this sunday. So that's just great. And then Kenneth and I will venture to Ajstrup for a week of absolutely friggin resolve to get as close to the god damn finish line as possible. I still need to write some lyrics... oh and some melody and the title track isn't even remotely arranged yet... and I have a ton of exam papers to top it off, but i'll work it out somehow. I hope... Yes. signing-things went fine last thursday. We met at Raadhuscafeen in Aarhus and had wienerschnitzels (no, not weener-schnitzels). That's a pretty good starting point in my opinion. Io sono un poco in amorato con i miei amici nuovi. Yes. The headquarters recommends the Mondo Cane album. It's pure spaghetti carbonara. Especially the first track 'il cielo in una stanza'. It has rekindled my love for the italian language and I've promised myself to start learning it properly this summer. So. Yeah. I guess that's pretty much it. Which isn't a lot really. Oh, might I add, that the Q & Hans one-off concert in May is, well not taking shape, but we are not quite as fucked as it looked a week ago according to rehearsals last night.

Perhaps it's time for a wee update. Things are looking up! Slightly. A lot of stuff has fallen into place in the last 48 hours. Tomorrow I'll be puttin' my signature on a new record deal, some shows are as good as confirmed, the first track is all done and now only needs mixing and mastering, oh and – on a personal note – May looks as though it is going to be the busiest period of my life ever. Tons of exams, record stuff, the INTERspot-art-concert-thingy with q, and a remix-track I am working on for my friend Marie. I'm totally redoing a new song of hers called Difference. It's sleazy and funky and delightfully disgusting.. like, lenny-kravitz-makin'-slo-mo-love-to-barry-white-sleazy. Here's a little teaser.

And:

Here are some videoes and some photos of the last couple of days in the studio :)

Ohai. So. Album's still pulling teeth. However, we've set some deadlines that look possible. Hell, they bloody well have to be, because – honestly - I'm fucking fed up with this piece of shit right now. The songs are friggin killer, but we just need some coherent time to get into the grooves, man. Time is being eaten by university and work, and that sucks. So, we've worked out a trip to Kenneth's summer abode on the eastern coast of Jutland come mid may, and the aim is to finish the first single, entirely, for release june 1st. The deadline for the master is july 1st. So the release is set to be, like, mid-september, or something like that... Depending on my new label's release schedules. I'll tell you more in a month's time, when everything will has been put down in writing.

In other news. A brilliant idea has popped up. Arh, a sort of brilliant idea... See, I used to love the concept of b-sides back in the day. Some of my favorite tracks in all the world are the contorted, ugly songs bands hid on the flip-side of their singles. Like a peak into the band-abyss. So, when I'm not doing album-stuff, I'm working on a couple of exclusive extra tracks for the iTunes singles that will come of the album. I think the tracks will be cover-songs and outtakes, just recorded at home. It's gonna be great, and I hope I find enough time to follow the idea to the end.

Oh, and in these troublesome, woesome times... The headquarters look to this track for strenght... as a good friend put it earlier today: it is hell disguised as the heavenly blessing. Jesus Christ. Just fucking listen to it! It makes me want to kill myself again and again and again and poke out my eyeballs and shove them up my ass. Horrid, indeed. Enjoy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zF7H9Ri7o-0

CIAO!

Stuff

So what's new? Nothing much. We had three consequtive days lined up, but the first one was abandonned because Figurines and Q had to use our ”studio” to mix some new tracks of theirs. It turned out excellent, and y'all should consider yourselves lucky to be blessed with such beautiful music soon. We met up with them in the evening and had a great night out. Good times.

Day 2 was marked with heavy hang-overs from the night before, so Kenneth and I spent the better part of the day staring at the guitars, and feeling guilty for not getting shit done. Or perhaps the guitars we're staring at us. Fuck it, all I know is that there was a lot of guilt! However, a meal and a six-pack later, we got working on the track Oh, The Irony. We had been post-poning it indefinitely because it's really difficult, but perhaps the hang-over facilitated the session – we did the entire thing A to Z in just a matter of hours. Totally awesome. It went from the bottom of my list to one of my favorite tracks, like this *snaps fingers*.

Thinking we could pull off the same with brand new track The Human Condition on Day 3 proved fullblown, outbreak-AIDS, though. No progress. Kenneth worked on the aesthetics of the song Spasm instead. I think it turned out OK, but we have to re-record the guitars now, because of the shift in aesthetics. Oh, and this morning my throat's all tied up. Coming down with a cold I guess, for the fourth fucking time in the past six months, dammit! Anyway... Now, I'll work a bit on the Krautrock-track. I still haven't written a single word or fleshed out a melody yet, so that needs to get done. Happy easter. Here's a little thingy that got cut:

A moment of clarity

Yeah, so the other day my friend Klaus remarked that this blog was one of the most boring things he ever saw. He said it needed pictures and videos. Now, I haven't really got anything entertaining in my private vaults, well, other than the video of said Klaus drumming and screaming over at facebook... So, instead of showing you more footage of that or of me looking for a screw driver , I'll hook you up with some of the tunes that have inspired the music we're recording these days. Look below! Finally, I have sort of come up with a tentative title for the album: 'Flux' – but I'm still thinking about it. Oh, and I've been asked by Marybell Katastrophy to remix a new song of hers. I am honored to have been asked as I have a great deal of respect for Marie and her music and her partners in crime. I can't wait to get going as soon as we need a break with the album. On to the videos, well, links, really. I've included a little comment to each song.

Silo This is one of my all-time favorite bands. They're so circular and hypnotic, beautiful and packed with beautiful tonal and rhythmic systems, and this track is no exceptions. I recommend the album Alloy!

Talk Talk This is just great, man. Please note the passage from 2:25-3:05, and the mellow ending. Music doesn't get any better than this!

Meshuggah The evil twin of talk talk! Seriously. They are connected in some weird way that I'm trying to figure out. Awesome, hypnotic music. This is the opening passage of my favorite album, Catch 33. Pure enlightenment!

Hooray for earth My aquintance Noel's band. I love his melodies and adventurous song structures and the potential for heaviness that all their songs contain. Great music. They're releasing a new album soon and I can't friggin wait :)

God bless!

Aight. So we’re still recording guitars, one song a day, taking our time, nice and easy. Last night we had a breakthrough, though. One of the tracks that I had dreaded recording because of the pretty complex – and fast – chord structures was done. And it wasn’t even that difficult, hehe. See, we cheated a bit. I’d grab the first chord and play along, and then Kenneth would sit right by me with his hands in place for the second chord, so I’d just let go of my chord and continue playing with my right arm, yeah? And it sounds as though I’m a totally awesome musician now! I figured that if it sounds good, it is good. I’m not that much of a puritan anymore. Furthermore, the song has a pretty complex ending with a whole bunch of guitars and synths on top of each other, yet we didn’t quite know how to finish it, round it of. I was screwing about with some harmonies on the guitar, and there it was… it sounds like perception melting, a collapse of consciousness, very “blaaaaargh”. All in all a good night last night! Today – after work – we’ll get to work on some drum-programming at my house. The song It’s All About Love needs some assistance in the drum department in the verses. Oh, and on a personal note, I’m going skiing with my friend Torsten soon. I have absolutely no monies so take the Cabin Fever Purchase Vow as a stress relief for me. Repeat after me: “Yes, I will buy your album - for myself and a couple of friends. Or at least give you a very generous donation. Yes, the music is godlike awesome. Yes, you of all people have tapped into the truth about all that is awesome.” See! Now, that wasn’t hard now was it?

Mjello. What's up you ask? Well, I presume you ask... Things are pretty mellow seeing as both kenneth and I have a lot to do in terms of work and university-biz. However, we had a couple of days tracking guitars last week. 2 days, to be exact. We had two visitors from the linguistics-department at Aarhus University, who taped us discussing how to approach the guitar work. They were doing some sort of project on how the discourse works in creative processes. Well, let it be known that their tape must contain a whole lot of FUCK and NO and PISS and other vulgar exclamations of woe, because we had a really hard time doing the guitars for the Executive-song. I literally felt like it was ages ago that I'd played guitar and I just couldn't get it right. We spent 12 hours on getting absolutely nothing! Very frustrating, as I'm sure you can imagine. An all time low for my guitar playing. Kenneth gave it a couple of shots as well, and it didn't work out either. The following day we managed to track pretty much all the guitars for the song Spasm. Turned out OK as far as I recall. We decided on approaching things from a different angle. Instead of recording to un-mixed, poor sounding stuff, we decided to beef things up in order to get some more passionate responses in the guitar playing, which proved to be a good idea, so hopefully we've worked around winding up in guitar-hell again. In other news, we finished the drum-touch-up session in the studio and managed to squeeze in a totally new track, the one I mentioned in a previous post. I think the drums are bound to turn out cool as they are multi-layered and climaxes in a wonderful percussive dissolution. It'll be great, but Q is more apprehensive, hehe. And and and I've got an idea for yet another track, that I hope to get to work on today. It's really funny how with the feeling of closing the entire thing approaching, I get all sorts of ideas... If this one turns out cool, the vast majority of the stuff has been written since june. Anyways, cheerio and thanks for reading these endless ego-rants.

Oh yeah! and Morten Riis has started working out some synth-stuff. He's my art buddy. Here's one of his works.

and here's a picture of me lovin' the crap out of him in oslo last year.

Yo dawgs. So, here's an update on the progression. We recorded the drums for 10 tracks last tuesday and thursday. Things turned out pretty awesome, and it proved a wise decision to spend some time in a proper studio. We finished the session by having a couple of beers and listening to brutal metal. It was fun! I think we'll have to re-record the drums for a song called agitator on thursday where we have a touch-up session. It needs a different snare sound. These songs are so minimalistic that, with the drums being cool, there is really only guitars and vocals left to do. That should take a couple of weeks, so what seemed like a behemoth of an undertaking is actually pretty well under way. I think this will be the best album I've ever done :)

here are some pictures from the drum session. Click for a full-screen view. Photo-credit: Mr. Q


The team - Kenneth, Q, Bredahl and myself - celebrating a job well done.


Let them eat cake.


Men of the year


Awesome conditions


Q recording a song tentatively entitled Kraut


Q's majestic setup. boom goes the drum.

Hey kids. So tomorrow is a big day for this record. We tried recording the drums at our rehearsal space which we totally botched – see the latest entry – so we decided to turn to a previous success. We've booked two days at the same studio we recorded the beta satan album a couple of years ago. Kenneth knows his way around the place, klaus is comfortable playing in the drum room and we've got a certain jacob bredahl (fee!) helping us out. Well, it's his studio, so he'll help us around what ever problem may arise. I'm pretty comfortable about this, seeing as we've prepared pretty much every single detail, and klaus is an amazing drummer so i can't see this not working out. I'll keep you posted, of course.

As for the songs, I wrote a new one on friday. It's totally depressing and a potential suicide risk, however, it is quite beautiful in my humble opinion, and it is going on the album fo' shaw. It's funny about these things... Just materialising out of thin air sometimes. Well, the new track brings the tally to 11, because we've ditched another mellow song I did. And i've got an idea for the album art work as well. I want big, mono-chrome, bright-as-fuck colours on every surface of it. It'd be cool to make the art work refer to nothing at all, somehow. I don't know. We'll see. I have to start thinking about album titles, also! Damn, I haven't given that much thought...

here's a picture of the love-team this time round. Photo credit: Kevin N. Andersen

Hey. Alright, so how's the little album coming along then? Well. Things aren't as simple as I had projected, of course. We're on a tight budget, so we can't afford extravagant studios and what not, so we decided to do the entire thing at beta satan's rehearsal space on account of the fact that we've gathered a fair amount of recording equipment there over the years. However, the room itself isn't suited for recording drums. It sounds tiny and makes the drums sound like hitting wet cardboard with a sausage, which is kinda not what we are looking for. So we tried recording the drums in two different corners of the room, and even the adjacent kitchen, and by golly, it just won't work. So, we're in the process of booking some studio time, stretching the aforementioned tight fucking budget, dammit!

Here's a video of little drummer boy mr Q screwing around with an ebow and me looking for a screwdriver. Riveting stuff right here.

and here are a couple of wide-lens photos for your visual enjoyment. How about that.

The daily diet consists of bananas, kanelgifler, coffee, cigarettes and a couple of beers in the evening. I find recording processes annoying and tedious and frustrating, so it's nice to eat crap and hang out with my buddies while cursing at elusive timbres and stuff. bye for now!

last night we started work on the album. retrieved re-useable files from the demos and sorted out cues for the guys I have helping me out this time. Speaking of... My good friend Kenneth is pushing buttons, recording and producing the damn thing along side myself, my good friend Klaus Mr Q Hedegaard is playing the drums, and my good friend Morten is doing the synth-stuff. The connaisseur of danish bullshit will notice that, yes, that is in fact pretty much Beta Satan, except for Kaare. The live band will be made up of these guys and myself. It's gon' be awesome.

yo dawgs

This is a blog! It shall henceforth contain the musings of yours truly in regards to the going-ons in Cabin Fever-land. It shall serve as a more in-depth, intimate, journal-y blahblah than the usual look-how-cool-my-band-is-myspace-page. It shall not be pushed upon thee as do some of my dear colleagues with their shameless self-promo. I've had enough of that shit, it is tiresome.

First order of business is a promise to track the development of the recording of the debut album. There will be video, cover art ponderings and a whole lot of me talking out of my ass about stuff I am concerned with during the different processes i'm facing. Why, you ask? I don't know. Does one need a reason for every little thing? If you don't care, then fuck off and don't come a-knocking. But I'd like you to care, being the narcissistic little cunt that I am.

best, johannes