Unveil the Mystery (Issue no11)

Hello there!! First, on behalf of the mystery band, thanks for your patience :)now....as i'm writing this..... ..the mastering process is on it's way, the credits in the inner booklet are under corrections, we're learning how to 'forget' the former working titles of some tracks, the track list and credits of the new disc is published on the website, and a tour is about to start very soon. Yes ladies and gentlemen, this means the record is finished. I guess i had no choice to be back with this blog, didn't i??? :) This new album will be called ''delusion rain'', mike had started writing it a while ago, but meanwhile he completed some work for a new album with his other musical project ''Huis'', and moved into a new house (including his own ''illusion'' studio). I guess it explains in part why the whole album project had been just a little bit delayed. But don't worry, from what i heard, Mike did'nt lost his magic touch, i think this one will kick some ass :) I did all my parts in my home studio, as most of the other members did too. the tracks i had to work with were the basic structures - a few guide vocals, a bunch of fake guitars and synths, and no matter how far the other instruments were done or not, i insisted that all the real drums should be recorded before i start recording my stuff. Poor drummers dont have that luxury even in our modern recording days, our own Mr. Goyette is no exception. He had to put down his tracks very early in the process and ''imagine'' what would be build over the simple midi files and a few early guide lines he had to work with. Been there....The main bass i've played was the good old fender jazz, with a sans-amp and nothing else in the way, no effects. Mike added some amp simulator later on during the mixing session. I couldn't just put some 4 strings in there, so the good ol' moog taurus bass pedal is back (no prog album should ever be recorded without it, right?), and i also played a couple of keyboards. Only 2 were used, a minitaur and an old roland jv1080 rack synthesizer. I indulged myself of using them both together at once with the jv's mellotron sample signal going through the moog minitaur filters, very nice, haunting effect. You'll hear the results of that experiment somewhere in the background of the longest track of the cd. Creating parts was quite easy for me most of the time, the demos again had very strong parts wich i didn't have to mess that much with to make them sound good, just my own little twist here and there. On only one case i really had to rearrange a riff from scratch because the original part seemed completely unplayable after several painful frustrated attempts. On one other occasion my old laptop just crashed one time too many so the poor monitor screen didn't survived at a thrown-away headphone incident. I had to complete my work on a used HP elitebook. Yeah yeah i know, the other guys in the band all running their stuff with mac's except me, blah blah blah... ...i assure you, everything else went very smoothly! For the first time since ''one among the living'', the whole live mystery band is featured on a studio album. We also have a couple of guests on it, including Antoine Michaud, the one who did a terrific job replacing Sylvain Moineau on our first European tour last year. It looks like this time i got promoted! Having mostly played bass pedals on ''one among the living'', not involved in ''the world is a game'', this time i took over all basse's from start to finish. Jean also played keyboards and flute additionally to his vocal duties. Jean-Sebastien is providing a totally new type of groove on drums of course, same level of energy as Steve or even Nick d'virgilio did but in a very different manner. His extensive use of double bass drum pedal techniques is one of the many reasons this album sounds a bit ''heavier'' to my ears. Sylvain Moineau brought some very cool stuff in it too, including some beautiful 12 string 'norman' acoustic guitars. In fact, everyone involved did surprised me, there's a lot of sounds in there i haven't heard or not that much in previous albums, sounds fresh and familiar at the same time. And that is all for the album soon to be released. we're all on a break from listening to it, so to rest my ears i'm currently spinning on my turntable some old stuff yet again - the car's first album, simon and garfunkel, the beatles 'revolver', steve windwood's ''arc of a diver'', jazzy stuff like chet baker, brand x, bruford....in a nostalgia mode before we go out and expose our ears to great new stuff as we did last year on tour in between shows.... thats it, more to come as we start this new tour!