News
Unshine Facebook
Merry Easter to all of you! Did you know that word 'easter' is derived from older word 'eoster', who was a goddess of spring in ancient Europe? Eoster marked the time of hares and renewal power of spring. The resurrection theme here brings us to the 2nd last song of ASTRALA...
The sequence where the songs from ASTRALA will be narrated one by one (by Harri) continues now with
SUO (KANTAA RUUMIIT)
A couple of years ago, I came across a book "The Bog People: Iron Age Man Preserved; Denmark: An Archaeological History from the Stone Age to the Vikings" written by a Danisch archeologist Peter V. Glob. This book described remains of Iron and Bronze Age people found preserved within peat bogs. I got really interested on the subject and studied it for several years. I've even seen some of those bog bodies in museums. The most impressive exhibition about the bog bodies was held in the National Museum of Ireland few years ago. The museum itself is also very well worth of visit due to the all iron age and druidism-related artefacts in it.
Iron Age people buried certain persons in to the bogs for reasons no one still knows. Were they kings, or were they thieves, there is no really idea about this. There is something very touching seeing these people's well-preserved features, haunting echoes from 3000 years ago. Time disappears between us and them and we recognize the connection to them, our foremothers and -fathers.
Our song 'Suo (Kantaa Ruumiit)' is my view about this matter. The lyrics are in Finnish and the music bears heavily traditional Finnish folk music marks. In the beginning of the song, the dead one is buried in to the bog. You can hear the water splashing when the body disappears under the water and journey in to the another time and place begins. At the end of the song, Susanna sings few lines in a fictitious language.
More than any other song of the album, this one needed a lot of practice to get it into the final recorded version. Especially the transition in to the faster end part was very difficult to create.
For us, this one is really enjoyable to play in front of audience and it has become the band favourite of all the songs in this album.
www.amazon.com/Suo-Kantaa-Ruumiit/dp/B079Q5X8KX
Throwback Friday is the new Throwback Thursday!
www.instagram.com/p/BvjM6zFgD4F/?utm_source=ig_share_sheet&igshid=1l8f6axd9hrms
The sequence where the songs from ASTRALA will be narrated one by one (by Harri) continues now with
VISIONARY'S LAST BREATH
For some time now, I've been fascinated about the possible (and in my opinion a very likely) connection between druidism and shamanism. In this song, I've done an interpretation of these similarities by describing an ancient celtic woman making a shamanistic journey to the underworld. In order to become a healer, you have to leave your human form, join with animal allies and find the fire from within you. Jan 'Örkki' Yrlund made a nice lyrics video for this song, you can find it from YouTube.
The guitars for this song were played in C-tune with all the strings dropped two whole steps down. The chorus of the song was really troublesome to mix as it had clean phasered guitars along with several electric guitar layers plus many layers of travelling synths, many of them operating on the same frequencies.
The original version of this song was a bit longer indeed. It was very difficult to nail down at the rehearsals being a bit more proggy than the final version. You can check out this longer version, the 1st demo of this song from our soundcloud page. The demo was recorded around year 2015 at our home studio with Garageband, drum samples and demo takeouts from here and there, here:
soundcloud.com/unshineofficial/visionarys-last-breath-1st-demo
Visionary's Last Breath (1st demo)
soundcloud.com
This is the 1st demo version of Visionary's Last Breath. Recorded at Studio Churchboat, Vantaa, Finland.