Check the videos via the following links:

Track 1: Dosa Jhana
Track 2: Awakening
Track 3: Reliance
Track 4: Karma To Burn

Man, was that great to do! Seeing this stuff makes it all come alive (almost literally). Cool!!!

All in all it was sort of a life altering experience: I really felt opened up music-wise and I received so much inspiration, it really affected my playing. Just like 15 years of listening to one CD and trying to figure out what they actually are doing…

Dosa Jhana rehearsal 1

Obsidian shows
Next we have some show coming up with Obsidian: one the weekend after the Cynic gig with Dosa Jhana and another one in November in Eindhoven with Model 101 and Misantropicana.

Project 'Psyclus'
Next to this all, I've finally started a project in which I'm trying to create music out of some rhythmic ideas that have been floating in my head for some time. I've been wanting to do this for quit some time, but I hjust never got to it. Now I finally did and I found Sjaak (Obsidian) and Kees (Sphere of Souls) willing to help me out on respectively guitar and bass. Also Ewell (Industrial Passage) and Tobias (Sacrilegious Mind) have been helping me with converting two texts I've written into a soundscape and a synthesizer loop, both of which I will be using in the project.

One of the main goals of the project was to create music in a way that feels natural to me, which means not per se by writing out stuff, what you could call more on a traditional way. I already started to try out some different ways, as you saw by for example writing a text that contains a strong image and having others reflect musical images or patterns of that, or by tossing up a rhythm or a phrase and jamming a song structure out of that.

Anyway, things are looking very good at this moment as we are a pretty good part into the first song. It has a good basic structure and I'm working on the drum parts right now.

As you can see things look good and nice and it's all very inspiring! It seems like there's a whole new phase happening and I enjoy it very much: I've been waiting for stuff to pick up like this and I'm very, very happy that it finally does. Thanks to all my good friends helping out and working with me. Cheers!

Then my little stack of old splashes also needed replacing. During recordings I felt that the sound is a bit too dry and snappy and over all too soft, compared to my other cymbals. As I always was a sucker for china like noisy metal thingies, I decided to try out a 10" Meinl Generation-X Filter China. I'll be receiving them in a couple of days and I'm dying to check out how they will work out in the rehearsal room!

Patrick from Patsticks sent me an e-mail about Cympads, which are rubber-like replacements for the ordinary felt washers you use on your cymbals. They should improve the sound of your cymbals and proof to be a bit tougher in use and it seems they actually do! I placed them on the cymbals that are most soft in my set-up and what happened was that the cymbals moved nicer, more free. The cymbal sound seemed to be more fresh and clear and it lasts a bit longer then with the felt washers. So, that seems to be a good investment!

In a couple of weeks I have a week holiday coming up, in which I'll be digging into the mechanics of recording software in order to work out some of the ideas for my solo-project (how pretentious!!! ) that have been buzzing through my head for some time now.  Looking forward to that very much! Whenever you are inspired it feels a bit like you have Alzheimer's disease and you might forget every idea you have just like that. So, I'm pretty eager to put some of those sketches on harddisk!

To make my idea's into something concrete I'll be working on the PC (very modern) and Marcel (my drumguru) was so kind to lend me a trusty and ancient Tascam Portable Studio (not very modern) to record stuff without very difficult technical hassle. I also have my eye on a couple of very talented musicians and good friends to help me out on the melodic part, but I'll update you on that later. I'll keep you posted on the progress!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Enjoy and let us know what you think!

Here you go …and please do not hesitate to share your reaction with us, we do actually really enjoy that

Cheers!

We re-did some tracks (26 and 25 for those who speak Obsidian) which ended up much tighter and more 'in the groove' them the earlier takes, which is really cool!

Today we where joined by Gerben who say this recording session come to a successfull ending. And we celebrated it with a nice Chinese diner and a couple of Black Adder episodes.

It's done (for my part) and for anything, the drums are going to sound killer! Thanks to Hans of the Excess studios for the help and the nice atmosphere to work in.

Stay tuned at the Obsidian website and myspace pages for the official studio video report. And now I'll only have to wait ten more minutes for my train to arrive…

Cheers!
Melle.

Today we where going to record two of the most atmospherical songs (with some grandiose build up's in them!) on the record and some of the parts where not yet fully written and it would take some experimenting and find tuning to see where we would end up with.

With the precise and (positively!) yet slightly hungover help of Sjaak we managed to record some very cool takes with which we are very, very happy!

In the evening we listened to everything we recorded so far, 'cause we recorded all the tracks in the rough, and we decided which takes we are going to re-record in order to see if we can still improve them a bit.

We ended the day with Eddy Murphy's show 'Raw' and a good feeling in our heavy heads.

We're almost there! See you later!
Melle.

During the rest of the day we laid down the tracks for two other songs and for the interlude. At this moment (0.00 hrs.) Simon is finishing it in a rough edit.

It was a mighty productive day today with a lot of fun and good meals in between Tomorrow we'll continue and then we're going home for one night to return saturday and sunday to finish up.

Stay tuned! (and enjoy the pictures if I manage to get them online… )
Melle.