Half of the day vanished in a hasty whisper. It went from my very early writing sessions to my blood tests, all the way up to the empowering meeting with my management. It’s filled with a lot of positive energy that I joined Mikko and the rest of the band in the studio to listen to the latest incarnation of where we were at with the album’s production. It was as symbolic as it was exciting, considering that Mikko would leave back home only a few hours later.

The process was simple but highly efficient. We would listen to a song, comment on it, and take notes of what would need to be done, changed, or added. It took us 3 hours to go through the record, which is 46 minutes so far. There’s still room for 2 or 3 additional songs we haven’t worked on so far, as I didn’t want to pass the 60-minute mark, considering just how emotional the record will be. And since the album is an incredibly cohesive journey already, the good news is that it means I wouldn’t have to “trash” the whole thing up, as I’m slowly getting back to my senses after being completely frozen inside, following Mikko’s arrival. Hopefully, regardless of just how stunted I was by the rapidity of the initial recording process, I managed to make myself pretty clear regarding the fact that I despise the potentiality of seeing ourselves assembling a collection of “cool” tracks based on commercial merits over the profound soulful identity I was looking for from the get-go. It wasn’t out of worry, as I had extensively shared my vision of the record with Mikko while we were in Tangier this last October.

In fact, being at the mid-point in the recording production is where it all becomes real enough for me to define what we truly have in our hands, and I was honestly floored. I don’t know if it was the “new me” talking, but what I heard was not only “it”, it was my heart beating in real time, which had the potential of becoming something way greater than myself and to extensively outgrow even the deepest emotions from which those songs initially originated from. For me, it means that it was worth diving more profoundly into the invisible abyss of my soul in the hopes of bringing additional significant elements to the fold. The next three weeks on our own will be decisive in that matter. If I do have all my lyrics to write, rewrite, edit, change, and transform over and over again, the rest will have to be experienced in the Upper Room, as a band exploring entirely free from conventions and standardization.

I was happy to see Mikko being proud of himself while listening to the album. He was entirely invested and it became even more perceivable as we were all progressing in the affective complexity of the voyage together. It will be poignant to see him go and very strange not to be with him every day for a few weeks, even if it will make the reunion more joyful and exciting.