The evening studio session concluded with Mikko asking me if I wanted to record my vocal guide track on “Architect Of Time”. “Of course, let’s do it”, I immediately replied, while everyone seated in the studio was about to leave the control room. I invited everyone to stay, as I didn’t want to create a culture of “Oh, Alex is recording vocal tracks, he needs to be alone or he’ll flip out.” On the contrary, I want to be as free as all the others who are recording their parts without wondering who’s in or out of the room as they do so. It’s a collective process and if that moment was symbolic for all the reasons I explained in a previous “Daily Studio Diary” entry, it was also a wonderful opportunity for me to set the tone for what was ahead for me. If I want to be free of my past stigmata, there’s no other way to do it… especially doing it with Mikko and JoJo since I usually craft my songs with Ben, knowing he will deal with it afterwards based on what I want and what I look for when it comes to my vocals. Trust is a journey for me… particularly when it comes to trusting myself.

That notion of trust would be put in motion quite quickly as my initial vision of the vocal delivery was more direct than Mikko’s vision regarding the song. There’s no right or wrong when it comes to emotional interpretations, but I do remember that when I first wrote the song I was still very confrontational, and singing with a little less of an “in your face” attitude wasn’t only supporting the lyrics’ true nature, but was allowing the song to be its own “entity” and not some channel of my “fear” to let the words be the words, like I did too many times during my tenure as Your Favorite Enemies’ singer…