It certainly looks like this blog is either a) in the process of dying a death, or b) has already completed the process while I’ve been busy looking away. Whether this death is only a temporary one (as deaths sometimes, unarguably, are) or of the more traditional kind known as “final” only time will tell. A similar situation occurred around this time last year, so maybe this will pass too. In any case, now is not the time to be painstakingly and regularly updating a weblog. Now is the time to do all kinds of other things. Like preparing to get married and purchasing a new apartment.

Next month, Sinisthra will be performing at a tribute gig in Helsinki, to a band who recently ceased to exist in a tragic manner, and we’re currently reaching a point where we are Successfully Coping With The Unnatural Tempo Changes Of A Certain Song, instead of “we’ll never be able to play this bloody song in its’ entirety” we started out with. This month should also finally see the recording of vocals for our album.

RECENT ENCOUNTERS WITH BOOKS:
Despite being one of my favourite authors, Iain Banks’ debut novel “The Wasp Factory” left me with mixed feelings. I usually try to go through an authors’ bibliography in a chronological order but this book has always kind of avoided me and maybe quite rightly so. I didn’t particularly like it, his second novel “Walking On Glass” is a lot better while the third one “The Bridge” is absolutely superb, as are most of his later novels as well. I like a book that is disturbed but not so much a book that is disturbing like this one.

I’ve never been a big fan of abrupt endings either (not even of the kind Jonathan Carroll favours) although abrupt endings seem to occur way more often than the traditional “everything will be explained in detail before it’s time for The End”. Maybe I should read a Terry Pratchett novel for a change, he’s always been good in tying things together unhurriedly towards the end, and I’ve been neglecting his latest novels for no apparent reason. Only there’s too much more interesting stuff waiting to be picked up and examined before it’s time to glimpse what’s up in Discworld.

Michael Moorcock’s “Behold The Man” was a remarkable read (even despite its’ abrupt ending) and among the very best of all the numerous Moorcock novels I’ve waded through with varying enthusiasm during the years. It deals with one of my absolutely favourite topics, i.e. casting light from an unexpected angle on the Jesus Myth. Highly recommended reading, his sentences are simultaneously sparse and abundant, graphic and vague, descriptive and freeflowing. And the Jesus he presents is a “drooling idiot”, which is always refreshing.

One thing led to another and as a result this blog is now located at http://blog.sinisthra.com/. Blogger no longer supports FTP protocol so the move was unavoidable, as well as slightly irritating. Highly irritating, actually, but now it's done. You will be automatically redirected in 30 seconds, or you may click here.

On Tuesday evenings I like to underachieve on many fronts. I tend to mooch around the apartment, insignificantly, wondering what’s for dinner while knowing full well that it’s entirely up to me what’s for dinner, or is there a dinner at all. As the prevailing weather conditions do not exactly encourage repetitive visits to the grocery store, it’s sometimes imperative to draw open the hidden cupboard of imagination and creativity if the more prosaic and not so metaphorical cupboards of actual foodstuffs have been discovered to not contain anything much. As was the case today.

So on Tuesday evenings I sometimes like to prepare a most exquisite dish known as The Soup Of Bleakness, where all kinds of things found from around the kitchen are placed in a saucepan and cooked in boiling water until the Supper is Ready. Tonight I was faced with an almost record-breaking shortage of possible ingredients, so the soup turned out to be exceptionally bleak. The imaginary aspects seriously outweighed the nutritional ones and as no cornucopias are available for purchasing online at the moment, only option remains, to visit the groceries any day now, and ruin the perfectly barren emptiness of the fridge.

On Tuesday evenings I occasionally also like to list things, like this:

RECENT ENCOUNTERS WITH BOOKS:
“Come Dance With Me” by Russell Hoban. Not his best book but gripping enough to make me outrageously prolong my lunch hours and coffee breaks at work, in order to finish the book as soon as possible and see how it ends. It ended very much in a manner a Russell Hoban novel often ends, and was a pleasure to read. Now starting on “Deeper” by Jeff Long. Here’s what the author himself says of the book. I enjoyed the chillingness of the first part, “The Descent”, but am not sure about this new one yet. The further I read it the more it reminds me of the way Dan Simmons’ Hyperion/Endymion novels slowly fell flat on their literary faces and good ideas got overwhelmed by not so good ones.

RECENT ENCOUNTERS WITH WINE:
Lest I forget. I can’t be bothered with pedantic listing of wines anymore but these ones were too good to just let go like that.

Pata Negra Gran Reserva, a most curious and surprising red wine from Spain. Tight and crispy, yet deep with possibly hints of cherries and vanilla. Went really well with an unusual pairing for spanish red, a food not containing meat at all but sweet potatoes, feta cheese and roasted onions. Will definitely be bought again. Needs food though, the taste was a bit too much on its’ own, in all its’ nose-wrinkling and tongue-flinching glory.

Steinschaden Grüner Veltliner, a delicate and fruity white wine from Austria. Had depths to it seldom found on white wines at this price. Accompanied gruyere fondue with relaxed sureness and gave nice contrast to the pinot grigios and verdejos of late. Will be bought again and tried out in different settings. Clearly one of the very best whites I’ve had for a long while.

On Mondays I like to feel a bit unconnected and do my best to not be on the best of moods. In solitude I fume, in a directionless and vague manner, and I might also sulk, in moderation and for no apparent reason. After a while I usually get a little peckish and might then pull out a forgotten, dusty tin of something-or-other from the top shelf of a kitchen drawer, hoping the contents would turn out to be edible. Tonight it was smoked canned mussels in oil and tonight it wasn’t something suitable for human consumption.

On Monday evenings I also like to dig out music that I used to like but have long since totally forgotten about. Tonight it was an album called “Herra Mirandos”, released on 1973, by a Finnish singer-songwriter Hector, whose career has spun over way too many decades and whose discography consists almost entirely of albums I assume to be so hideous and horrific to the ear that it’s hard to find proper adjectives to describe them. Of course I can’t be sure because I haven’t listened to them all, and, heaven forbid, never will too.

This has never stopped me from loving bits of “Herra Mirandos”, though. The album starts with an intro called “Ekhnaton rakastui aurinkoon” and then proceeds on to the awesome title track. After that it’s mostly downhill all the way till the end, of the album and of his entire career.

So, here’s those two wonderful tracks, and now I’m off to dig deeper into the kitchen drawer. There must be something interesting and non-toxic I can eat in there.

Since winter clearly refuses to subside it might be a good idea to see if some allegorical alternatives for warmth are to be found from the world of music. First, the “Direct Personal Involvement”-section:

Sinisthra is currently writing new material and listening to a skeleton recording of a tune we’ve been dabbling with fills me with an undeniable sensation of warmth and general feelgoodness. I’m seriously itching to fit it with some lyrical content once the actual melody lines for vocals surface. This might take some time yet since it’s practically impossible to make rehearsals happen on as regular a basis as I’d like them to happen. So there’s some sourness to the warmth derived from this.

L.A.M.F. had a meeting yesterday where we agreed to try and write an albums’ worth of music, and if decent enough songs start appearing, see if it would be possible to release an album. This naturally warms me up a bit, but since I have no creative input in that band to speak of, it doesn’t exactly set my soul on fire. Plus, in case we actually manage to come up with an album, there’s the additional nuisance of trying to find someone to release it too. I’m not anxiously looking forward to adding another unreleased and unfinished album to my list of recorded works, alongside the perpetual-and-daily-hurting-thorn-on-my-side Sinisthra album that was started on July 2008, and the ridiculously prolonged The Puritan album, for which I recorded my drum parts on November 2006. So there’s only a limited amount of warmth derived from this too.

Moving on to “Music Not Including Personal Involvement, Making It Potentially Enjoyable In A Genuine Way”-section:

The “Template For A Generation”-album by Darwin’s Radio has been slowly growing on me, until today it suddenly bloomed, as the song in the middle, “Breathe It In”, took off, and at the same time also sunk in. The main thing that’s been keeping me from hailing them as brilliant has been my mild dislike for the vocals that are a bit on the weakish side. The singer used to be in a Rush tribute band and I’ve never been a fan of that school of singing. Today I read from their web page that this singer has now upped and left but the band has decided to carry on and find a new guitarist/singer. To me, this is good news and I’m looking forward to hearing what they come up with in the future. Listening to this album makes me feel indisputably warm inside, shame about the YouTube link below cutting off before the song reaches its’ climax.


The new Tuvalu album has been the best thing lately, though. I preordered it as soon as I found out they were releasing new music, and got a free mp3 download with it. This has been blasting away on my car sound system for two weeks now, causing delicate situations in the traffic as I sometimes can’t help tapping my foot to the grooviest parts of their music. The album is absolutely brilliant, to put it mildly. Tuvalu is in my opinion the most significant band singing in Finnish for ages, only CMX has had an impact similarly strong on me. This thing definitely warms me in a most definite way in the midst of bleakest winter.