Mayday! M'aider!

I've been sick as a dog the past few days. Feeling incredibly under the weather. The worst thing is the weather has been lovely. Poor poor me. It's become an annual thing. Me getting ill around the first of may! Stupid pollen! Alas, enough with the ranting! 

May Day or first of may is an ancient northern hemisphere spring festival that is widely celebrated throughout our country. For obvious reasons people started to celebrate the Mayday Eve as well, more partying! And that's today! Party Time! Excellent! Except that I'll probably stay home. But I know what I'll be doing! I can watch our brilliant HD video clips from the YLE (the Finnish National Broadcasting Station) live video recording sessions! We were so lucky to be part of their training week. They filmed us from six different camera angles in their famous Studio 2. All the signals went back to a huge truck outside the station(!). It had fancy facilities and it's the place where all the TV producers were sitting. Nowadays that's where all the magic happens. We even had different directors for each of our three songs. I won't tell you which songs we recorded but you'll see soon enough :) You might even spot some mistakes, we are human after all. Or maybe it's just our beloved keyboardists personal artistic choice we get to enjoy ;)

Guess what?! Our EP is so near completion and we are so very stoked! Can't wait to show you what we've been working on the past months! We have so much stuff coming up for you so stay tuned! The quality live videos, some acoustic madness and the actual EP! Even some more surprises!

So I advice you all to have an absolutely wonderful day. Enjoy the weather, your friends and your life! After all, your happiness is all up to you! And if still feel blue, put on your favorite song and remember that I'm home, sick and alone, watching Finding Nemo. Eating crisps and drinking coke. Wait a minute... that was suppose to sound sad and make you feel better, but I bet I end up having a much better time than you! Toodles!

krippe- ~~~ヾ(＾∇＾)'ー♪

Oxford Circus, Cambridge Circus, Piccadilly Circus. Where is Satin Circus?

As you can see from my previous posts, I'm this band's true jet-setter . Whenever I'm not sippin' on a smoothie or writing by my baby grand, I'm most probably in some place out in the world that is too cool for the other SC-members ;) Recent visits include New York and St. Petersburg, and now it's time for London!

Having been in more than 30 countries, and having seen most of the European capitals, I can say that London is truly something unique. Nowhere else in the world you actually get thrown out of a bar at 11 pm, and they give you a plastic mug for your beer. Basically take-away beer! (That happened the first night..)

My friend Kira, who we went to see, studies at UCL, one of the top universities in the world. Coldplay was formed in the halls of UCL so for me it's the best university :D They've even left a crappy piano somewhere in the halls cause Chris Martin basically wrote Yellow on it...

We lived in Camden, the hippest place around. The place where Orlando Bloom lives, where Amy Winehouse died, and where Colplay's two previous albums were composed and recorded at their own studio "the Bakery". Camden is also the place for cool LED T-shirts, so you know what I'll be wearing on the next SC-gig!  

Traveling with Vertti, the next big thing in the world of industrial design, and Stella, the soon-to-be record company boss, it was easy to find things to do. Vertti, an artistic type as he is, insisted that we got to watch an exhibition by Damien Hirst, the richest artist in the UK. Modern and very shocking art…

Being in London without seing a musical is like going to Rome without eating pizza. (although apparently some people in our band seem to think the food in Rome is not that good…) There's a difference between a musical in London and a musical in Helsinki. It's like comparing Coldplay's live show to Arttu Wiskari's. You know.. We saw We Will Rock You, not the best I've seen, but the professionalism and the way they do it still amazes me! (sorry about the coldplay-comparisons, that's what london does to you..)

London has the best pub food in the world. As you can see from this picture, it's really something else. mmmm <3

And my breakfast at the legendary Breakfast Club: Pancakes Eggsited (pancakes, ham, cheese, egg, and maple syrup.) yummy! and the pomegranate smoothie <3333

We also had London's best Lebanese food!

That was London. I've already bought tickets to Berlin for the summer, and hopefully that trip will involve something more than just chillin'. Let's just say we know some very interesting people who live there…

---

In the studio things are moving forward, and we're getting close to the end of the production! We've spent two whole days recording backing vocals for the 4 songs, and today we did the final lead vocals and the saxophone. The mixing starts tomorrow! We're all really excited!!! 

We're also having another videoshoot on thursday, but we'll talk more about that later :)

-Axel <3

Natural Sweetness

Hello, hello! 

Today we're taking part of a cool new concept called "Luomustudio". The finnish word luomu translates to "ecological", but it also contains the meaning "natural". Their aim is to portrait a song in the most genuine and stripped down way, all acoustic, with only one camera-angle! 

While I was buying batteries for our Brio toy-train I found a nice surprise in the ice-cream department. One of my favorites from my childhood:

Childhood is also the theme for our luomustudio video. We have collected our favorite toys from our early years, and put together a massive playground, full of teddies, cars and building blocks. And coolest of all we have a massive Brio wooden railway, with a golden gate bridge and all! 

Childrens games are innocent and natural, and we want to grasp all that happiness and beauty in our songs too. It's good for anyone to sometimes leave the "adult" problems alone for a while, and just let go. Play a board game, or listen to your favorite music from years ago, or perhaps do a few dance steps to a Satin Circus song. =) 

Ah, I just can't get over how nice this video is gonna be! Axel's playing his new best friend, a 80's model Yamaha toy-synth he bought on Ebay. I'm playing my upright* =D  And were all acoustic! It sounds great!

Check out all the pics of this funhouse! I bet it's gonna take a while to clean up after the take. Or… why not just leave it there? What do you say Olli? (It's his apartment!)

The video will be up in a few weeks on luomustudios youtube channel. Check out what the other bands have done: http://www.youtube.com/user/luomustudio

*sounds funny to call it an upright-bass, since I was voted to play it sitting 3-1. 

Yes, Satin Circus democratic system can be hard to deal with sometimes. =D

See you next week <3

//Paul

choo-choo!

Gigging

Hey you popsters! 

Ahh it feels so good to be doing the very thing we play in a band for: gigs! After a somewhat long pause we've been "on the road" again and had two amazing gigs. And there's more to come (check our page regularly to be up to date, more gigs coming up all the time)!  As fun as it is to work in the studio, it's not the reason we picked up the instrument in the first place. I guess Teemu Brunila (the singer in The Crash) managed to verbalize the feeling when you're on the stage and see everybody in the room dancing, smiling, enjoying and just going f**king crazy(!): the-whole-body-orgasm. Now there's a feeling you want to experience again :D And the instant feedback you get when just watch people's faces while playing is just priceless. Especially when it's positive! :)

As Krippe mentioned last week, we were in Tallinn promoting Satin Circus at the TMW-festival. It was such a great experience and I think we came back as a whole new band, meaning that now we know exactly what we want to do and how we want to do it. We also learned that what we are doing is just so unique even in the international scale that the world is just going to go nuts when we get the EP out (in May, be patient:)! We met the guy who pitched "Stronger" to Kelly Clarkson (Billboard #1) and the manager of the boy band Blue. So that gives you an idea of the caliber of people who were down there. And the best part is that they wanted to hear our upcoming EP! So big things ahead… x)

By the way we've been bouncing around this idea of starting video blogging. What do you think? 

So here's a guy playing "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" with cats...

Social Joe <3

Ps. So what's the deal The Hunger Games (movie, not the book)? I mean I can see why Twilight is so popular but wow… I went to see it and was just utterly amazed by the quality of this thing (and not in a good way, if you wondered). It made the box office record on it's opening weekend so obviously I've missed something here. Can someone please point it out for me?

X3M & TMW

Hey guys!

It's been an amazing week! So much has happened during the past days! You know the feeling when you've just bought your favorite candy (mine's Rowntree's® fruit pastilles), you take a few and suddenly they're gone! Like candy in the wind. Anyhow, I guess you get my excellent metaphor! So much has happened in a short amount of time and we've had a great time!

So this Wednesday we had the privilege to play in Bar Soho in Porvoo. It was the semifinals in Radio X3M's band competition Popturné! Axel did a great radio-interview earlier and they even played our song on the radio! We hadn't expected anything from the band competition, we just wanted to put on a good show. And guess what?! We won! So now we get to play in the finals, which are in Vaasa. The semifinals were incredibly tight, the other bands were great! We especially enjoyed the great rock/punk trio The Onetimer! Here is an interview I did for the music forum Musik&Talang (Music&Talent) after the gig. It's in Swedish, but I guess you all speak the international language of happiness n_n



I know you're all wondering if I wear pink lipstick, but I don't. Apparently I don't need to :) So the Final is held the 11.5 in Leipätehdas, Vaasa @ 21:00! We're super stoked and hope as many of you can make it there!

On Friday we headed over to Tallinn for the Tallinn Music Week festival. It's a showcase music festival mainly for people in the music business. We had a great time! Loads of inspiring panel debates and innovative new ideas within the music field. Met loads of new people and got great contacts! Our favorite was Dire Straits' legendary manager Ed Bicknell! He's a funny man I'll tell you that :) People were surprised to see a band directly approaching them and everyone were positively surprised! "Ohh, you're one of the colorful ones" was heard frequently :D Our promotion led to that many were genuinely interested but I won't reveal anything more ;) You'll see what the future brings! We also came across an amazing duo called Instrumenti! Absolutely breathtaking! They were multi-talented virtuosos with great persona! One of the best live bands I've ever seen! They will surely be out there soon!

But what Paul really enjoyed the most were the strobes!

Also great food at great prices! Lovely architecture combining old and new! I even went to my first dubstep disco! Had loads of fun! Wobble wobble! :)

We came back on Sunday and feels good to be back in routine! Even our Monday Morning band practice felt great! We are getting everything together neatly for tomorrows gig!! I can't wait to play our new songs for you! Everyone's eager to show what we've done with our existing songs and to present you with our new tunes! So this is a gig you REALLY don't want to miss!! So tomorrow Tuesday 3.4 @ 21 Satin Circus pops out in Café Mascot Neljäs linja 2!

That's it for me now! Have a lovely week and hopefully I'll see you all tomorrow! -krippe ~~~ヾ(＾∇＾)'ー♪