A week of recording under our belts here in Tromso's Arctic quiet. The Disciplines album has done a lot to take shape. We've been playing 8 songs live on a regular basis, and a couple more songs were pretty much fleshed out tho not quite ready to play live. So, despite the fact we had two days off for Xmas, we recorded the music for ten songs, and I sang vocals on six of those.
The studio exists in a space, built as an add-on to a building that is owned by the city and devoted to cultural activities. There's a cafe (dormant in winter); a music school, a film production company/post studio, various artist studios, etc. Of course, except for one evening of laughter and the smell of gluhwein, we've not seen evidence of anyone else in the building, it's sensibly abandoned for the holidays--art can wait. Well, one night when I was cleaning up the kitchenette, I was totally startled by the security guard who comes and does a walk thru in the night, then moves on to other buildings on his watch. Oh, and I went in the cafe one morning, and there were people in there. And, not being able to tell if I was the ghost, or if they were, my presence at the counter enacted not one iota of acknowledgment. Eventually, everyone walked out. I followed, the cafe was locked up, and all dispersed--again, I was treated as if invisible, and its possible I was.
Now, despite the fact it's a kind of artistic center, the building itself is a classic in functional Norwegian dowdiness. For Norwegians it's all about what you have in your head, man...the green walls, creepy vinyl flooring, metal kitchen surfaces all serve a greater purpose, which is to survive in this Queen Maud Land which might otherwise chomp up and ruin a more precious, filigree'd edifice.
The studio, added on many years after the main building's construction (more on that in a minute) is relatively cheery--we have hardwood floors here, and in the control room, modern, pleasant lighting. The main room is very big, with extremely high ceilings, roofed in corrugated metal, like a warehouse. Huge ducts and fluorescent lighting in those ice cube tray fixtures above, but with proper rheostat adjustment you can make it feel acceptable. Curtains ring the main room to control audio reflections, there's a big old Kawai grand piano, and, thanks to me, a tacky yellow ironing board.
The band lives in the main building (they have a common foyer, from which we also access the tiny kitchenette next to the studio entrance) in a small apartment on the 2nd floor up. The apartment has three beds in two rooms, plus another kitchenette and a tiny bathroom. Typcial of Norwegian bathrooms, the shower is in the corner, and is only distinguished from the rest of the bathroom by a shower curtain that follows a rounded square track in the ceiling. Water hits the vinyl floor and spreads out--it's your duty to squeegee the water towards the drain after you finish your shower. Like I mentioned, there are three beds--and I was the last to arrive. So, when all four of us are here, I sleep in the studio, first on the couch, and lately on an inflatable mattress that our engineer, Jon Marius, brought over. I was using Ralla's and my coats to cover myself--more recently, I have borrowed a duvet. Things are looking up.
The main building was built as a hospital sometime in the 20th century. Tromso built a bigger hospital later, and this place became a sanitarium for TB victims, esp. children. Those children, it turns out, were not treated well. The treatment back then was to strap them permanently to a bed, and if they cried--stuff their mouths. No joke--there's been lawsuits as the grown kids come to grips with the medical atrocities committed upon them. Now, it's been a cultural center for a long time now--the place does not have the vibe of Rigshospitalet or the Overlook Hotel. Well, not enough to freak me out, anyway--and I am very easy to freak out. I sleep two floors away from the rest of the guys, and am usually the last one up, puttering around, setting the dishwasher in motion, going for a last pee. Then laying down in the control room, with the sliding doors partially open to the big room--all night the fluctuations in the heating system causing all kinds of skittery noise. Again, no ghosts have offered their advice or admonitions despite my presence, so I guess the place has pretty well been exorcised--or the amateur phantoms simply outdone by the multiple blasphemies of art.
Most days start of with negative double digit temps (in Celsius--roughly eqiuvalent to single digit positive temps in F). Tho we are on the positive side of the winter solstice, that doesn't give us much to work with yet. It's patently, palpably dark til about 9.30 each morning, and completely dark again by 2 in the afternoon at the latest. On clear days, which are most of them, thankfully, the orange glow of dawn proceeds directly into the the orange glow of dusk in an unbroken display of the promise of the sun's return--in tease fashion. Twilight is a couple of hours long, the perfect chemical blue that I associate with late summer nights is the dominant color. Now, we don't have much in the way of windows here, and the 'front' windows at the entry, actually on an obscure side of the building that faces a steep hill, don't afford any views of all the phenomena I just described. It's important to get some light, but many days it's much easier to just sau screw it and stay indoors. This pretty much means I am sleepy and groggy much of the time. The body just doesn't have a reason to start itself up.
So, in our Apollo-Soyuz-esque microverse, we plug away on our music, and write more when we run out of stuff that we know. Then, Christmas came and work stopped. Baard and Ralla had flights home on the 23rd, but Bjorn and I worked that day. So, no way to get home for me. On the 24th, we were taken in my
Pernille Sparboe, whose EP I produced at the same studio as we're working in now, back in May. She took us for Christmas dinner at the home of her sister and family, and on the 25th, we hung out at her flat (which has a great view of the sunrise/set) and dined on lutefisk. It was a lifesaver, but I was still extremely homesick. My headspace was somewhat weirded out by the fact that on the 23rd and 25th I watched two horrifying films that use isolation to terrifying effect--"The Cube", which is an early work by Muppetmaster Jim Henson, that is as far from fuzzy cuteness as you can get; and "Funny Games", the Austrian version,
Michael Haneke's first version of his exploration of violence and our relationship with it in the media and the arts. Bleak no doubt...haaaalp.
Tromso on the 25th December was absolutely locked down, nuclear winter style. Only the local gas station/convenience store was open, and it was so intensely forlorn in the city that we felt compelled to go there and just check it out a bit. Oddly, there was someone hard at work on the 25th in the shipyard, where big fishing boats undergo repairs--a power tool was clearly being put to some purpose in one of the vessels in drydock.
As much as we needed a little breather, and as lovely as Pernille and her family were for taking care of us (and I can't thank them enough), I was glad to be back at work yesterday--I needed a sense of purpose to be this far from home. Progress has resumed, and it feels good. I've been writing yesterday, my brain may be starved for photons but it keeps sparking on.
Love
KS
Tromso, NORWAY
