Tuesday, December 27, 2011

the winter solstice just passed by!

Hey guys, it's almost summer!! We're happy to anounce that June is on it's way even though the weather's kinda crazy right now.. Btw, check out our new version of See You in June on our FB-page! (facebook.com/satincircus)

We just finished the recordings of What Do You Say with Matias "the Mixer" a couple of days ago, and we're now waiting for the results!!

This is the first time since last summer that we haven't practiced in over a week, but when we get back to business in January we're gonna be better than ever! We're playing a gig in Nosturin Alakerta on friday the 13th (!!!!), and one in Arabiasali on monday the 30th (doesn't sound that dramatic..) If you haven't seen us live yet, you'd better come!

We're also gonna have a couple of meetings with interesting music industry people, but we'll talk more about that later!

Hope you're all having a great holiday!





- SC

Sunday, December 18, 2011

ABCs

Hehe today it's time for me to finally break the ice! Yeah, so last post was pretty fun with thursday's amazing recording session. But what also happened was that Axel threw an amazing Pre-Christmas Penthouse Party (i.e.. a P.P.P.) on saturday!! Cool people and good snacks indeed, but the coolnessfactor simply smashed through the roof when we introduced: Acoustique Band de Cirque Satin (i.e.. A.B.C.s.) or more commonly simply our songs played on acoustic instruments!

Our setup features me on my beautiful upright bass, Axel on his Steinway Baby Grand (no kiddn'), Krippe on acoustic guitar and satinsmooth voice and Social Joe on any groovy items he could find... but mainly a pizza cardboard tho... It was so exciting to play in this intimate setup. As even big stars say, the hardest thing is to perform in front of all your nearest and dearest! We've made some new arrangements for this setup, and who knows if we soon will end up playing gigs with this thing! 




What will follow next is not for the lighthearted, and at least not the high frequenced.
This is Paul's Gear Amazingness (i.e. P.G.A.) 

In this first episode we'll take a look at my brand new amplifier! Its as Ampeg PF- 500. And its a bass players dream! Check this out:




You can actually flip the head inside the cabinet for transportation! Oh, and it growls some tight bass frequencies with its 500 watts of doom.

Well, that was last saturday, and last week we were on a few amazing gigs… news of which will follow! 

See you. 
// Paul <3

Sunday, December 11, 2011

STUDIOTIME!!!!!!!

Hi, Axel here, the smoothie-sipping synth player! Im writing this from the studio, the magnificent studio of Matias "The Mixer" that is! We're recording one of our songs here, and its gonna be freakin awesome! We started by recording drums and bass, and Olli and Paul did a great job! Paul's low B-string in addition to Olli's mind-blowing red-white-stripe bassdrum made the whole damn studio shake like a washing machine on a spin cycle!!




And our producer Matias "The Mixer" was great as always! Finland's music scene wouldn't be the same without him!

After we finished the drum and bass recordings, we did the guitars. Krippe played as good as always, if you've ever seen us live I'm sure you know what I mean!! And with Matias' knowledge of guitar sounds and effects we got an even better sound that we ever could have dreamed of..



















Me and Matias were just sitting in the studio all the time wondering how our band can sound this great ;)

I'm up next. We're gonna have a separate session later this week in Matias' keyboard studio, and search for the sounds we need! He's got all kinds of old analog synths: a Moog, a Roland Juno 106, a Jupiter 8, a Prophet… If you know anything about synthesizers you know that's heaven! I have no idea of what we're gonna use, but I know one thing: its gonna be totally mind-blowing f**kin' amazing!!! We're really looking forward to releasing this song!!




The last part will be the vocals, the hardest and the most important part. But as we all know, Krippe's gonna nail it!!


Here's a video of Krippe where he pretends to know all the stuff :D



And here's an even better video, where Krippe does what he knows best, and so does Olli……….





This is the best one :D studio work can be quite fun!!



See u next week!! -Axel

Monday, December 5, 2011

Pre-Christmas Party!

Well Hello!

What do bands do besides music? Well here's a little sneak peak for you!

Last friday we had "Satin Circus pikkujoulut" (pikkujoulut = A traditional Finnish party held before Christmas. Basically just another excuse to get drunk with one's friends and co-workers). So as every self-respecting company or band, we decided to have one of our own. We chose the dress code to be black suits, white shirts, drawn back hair and too much make up.



We reserved a table from a fancy restaurant and went by the name Kielaveden poniratsastusseura (= The Kielavesi Pony Riding Club). I guess they didn't buy the name but the dress code must have made us look a lot wealthier than we were. It's truly amazing how much better service you get when the waitress thinks you're rich! She was all over us, constantly bringing more champagne, shots, wine, beer and dishes to our table. It was the most fun I've ever had in a dining restaurant.




After quite a while we felt like we needed to move on, and for the after party we knew just the place: a bar in the middle of nowhere in the suburbs of Espoo. Kind of a random choice? Well let me tell you a story...


It all started last spring after one of our rehearsals when we spontaneously decided to go have some beer. The problem was that we couldn't come up with a bar that felt worthy of the occasion. So we decided to improvise and do something different.

The plan was to take the first bus to Espoo and then get off on the eighth stop after the Nokia headquarters. It seemed like a perfect way to get somewhere one wouldn't otherwise ever find (and looking back, that it was!). So we ended up in the suburbs of Espoo with no idea of where we were. After wandering around for a while we found a bar called Viking. The plan turned out to work perfectly! This was a place that hadn't seen the daylight since the 1980's. There were mullets everywhere; people with flannel shirts and cowboy boots playing darts and drinking beer from giant pints while the loudspeakers played country music with Finnish lyrics!

It turned out to be a hell of an evening for us! After one-too-many beers it was time to get going back home, but (surprise surprise) it turned out that when you're in the middle of nowhere the busses don't really operate at two in the morning. So with no idea of our whereabouts we decided to just go to one direction until we'd get someplace familiar (it actually made a lot of sense at that moment). Lucky for us we hit the Turku highway after awhile, and we knew that it would eventually lead us back to Helsinki. So we started walking the highway to get back home (which doesn't seem like the best idea when thinking back, but then again, the fun things rarely are). So we ended up walking the whole journey (during which we i.e. jumped into the ice cold sea from a low bridge. Once again, not the best the best idea, but definitely a story worth telling one's kids someday).




So now it was more than clear that if we're going to have an after party, it has to take place in Viking! Going to a bar in a somewhat bad neighborhood wearing a black suit, speaking with a funny accent and asking for the wine list was surely a tempting idea. Anything could happen!

Since we didn't really know which bus we took the last time, we were forced to ask around if some taxi driver would know the place. Eventually we found one, and so we were on our way to the magical place.



This time they happened to have a Karaoke Night, which meant that the caliber of the people involved was somewhat different from the last time (I think the four of us brought down the average age in the bar quite a bit) but after the initial shock we ended up having a hell of a time there!






See you next week!
- Social Joe ;)

ps. We sketched a new promo pic that we all like a lot. What do you think?