soundi czerwiec 2007

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Article:
Tuomas Holopainen has been answering to many questions since October 2005 "If I told you, I'd have to kill you". The final curtain of secrets will open at the end of September, when the new album Dark Passion Play will be released. Soundi had an opportuity to interrogate the creator of the album the same way it album has been done. Slowly and with care.

"Bloat-heavy is the term we are trying to launch" (not sure if bloat is the word here... if it sounds weird ask for explanations)

Finnvox-studios, Helsinki 24. May 2007
Songwriter and keyboardplayer Tuomas Holopainen walks briskly down a long corridor to the recording-building's common room and when he gets there he lights a cigarette. He looks well-off, though a bit tired.
Though the address of the Kitee's metal marquis (why would they call him that is beyond me...) is temporarily 20 square metres rental flat in Punavuori (Helsinki), this place has been his real home for the last weeks. Nightwish's sixth album has been mixed here with Mikko Karmila for two months. They've had one day for resting per week.
We've just spent a bit over an hour of quality time by listening this massive piece together from the beginning till the end.
No other reporter has heard the record fully, and this secret world-premiere hasn't been officially organized. When there's trust between people, solutions can be made because of the timetables.
The release of Dark Passion Play is still a third of a year away, but the album will be ready tomorrow.
The Nightwish-boss admits that he feels a little like a small boy who just got a new toy. "What are you going to do after massive partying?" the classical question makes him laugh.
-It's been a huge church to build, Holopainen says, serious again. -But at no point it felt like I had nothing to give anymore. It was maybe a bit surprising too.
Religious metaphors and references don't end up here. Dark Passion Play's most essential songs rests on judo-christian images. Listening the album and eyeing the lyrics the same time one notices for example a place name "Swanbrook" in the single Eva. It leads to the familiar address.
-Swanbrook is Jesus-artist Thomas Kinkade's idea of a perfect place. Some kind of Heaven on Earth, Tuomas tells and hurries to explain that he hasn't started thinking more about religious things.
-I saw a book in a bookstore that had beautiful covers, they caught my interest. I noticed the religious tone not until home. Nothing wrong in being religious, but it's not the reason for Swanbrook in Eva.
He explains Dark Passion Play's mentions about "own acre in heaven", hanging on the cross and Judas as universal symbolism and theme. One song in this atmosphere is especially nasty, though.
The subject of the hardest song Nightwish has made so far, Master Passion Greed, is obvious after one listening: ex-singer Tarja Turunen's manager-husband.
In Finland religion rarely touches your everyday life, but it's different in Marcelo Cabuli's home country, in 92% catholic Argentina. Tuomas still claims that he didn't choose the sentence "Hey Judas your Christess was our love" to stab anyone on the back. -Are they catholic over there? I didn't even know that, he is astonished. -Seriously! We are playing with sensitive stuff, but it's only symbolism. Everyone has to realize that.

Maybe the message would have been delivered also with a piece of lyrics "leech in a mask of virtue" or with a Booker T. Washington quote in a booklet: "I will let no man drag me down so low, as to make me hate him". Heavy words, especially from the mouth of a half black, half white man born in slavery in USA in 1856. More familiar theme that has become almost a mantra for Tuomas in the inteviews is escapism. Talks about escaping the reality are in radical conflict with his very happy and sheltered childhood.
Third generation streetchild in Calcutta needs escapism, not Tuomas Holopainen who earns a good money for doing his dream-job.
-Maybe... (pause) I had a happy childhood particlularly because I have been escapistic (is that a word, I wonder) my whole life. I experience everything very seriously all the time. That's what this is about. Many people are escapists without knowing it. Reading a book or watching a game of football or baseball is escape from reality.
Holopainen's phone is on vibration but the blinking screen tells about the amount of people wanting to contact him. It's been less than a day from the news that Eva has been leaked to the net through connect.com in Britain. Announcing things has been sped up, but basically the name of the new singer Anette Olzon is a secret to outsiders for a few hours still.
Like Tuomas said on this pages two issues ago for the first time, the agent game is about to end. Finally. The judging of the Dark Passion Play will continue in Pitäjänmäki (Helsinki).
Already in last summer when Soundi visited Sävi (Soundi 8/06) it was obvious that Tuomas had created a huge progressive piece. Later this almost a quarter of an hour long song was named The Poet and the Pendulum. The name of course comes from the novella The Pit and the Pendulum by the father of horror romance, Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849). In the piece there's for example a line "I hate what I have become".
-The bigger theme of the song is that I'm trying to ponder how people see their life and values during bad moments in life. I'm actually quite proud of the idea and the symbolism, Tuomas considers.
-I really felt the whole year 2005 like I was on altar and the blade was slowly falling downwards, little bit at a time, he refers to Poe's story. -Until it finally cut me half. My the most favourite part in the whole album is this song's last part (Mother & Father). It tells about how it's possible to find unconditional love and support somewhere. Things aren't always that bad, though it might feel like it.
Holopainen tells he had thought the song order of the album more carefully than ever. When The Poet and the Pendulum was placed first, it became certain that it needed to have three of the easiest songs to accomppany it. The first video was supposed to be made from this song, but Tuomas laughs that they wouldn't have had enough money for it.
-This was the hardest song to make becuase to me it's the best song ever. It simply mustn't have failded. It was quite a job to make it sound good for over 14 minutes without sinking into artificially artistic stuff. Karmila mixed the song for a whole week. And he confessed a few days ago that he still hasn't a clue about it.
The Nightwish-captain himself has kept his eyes strictly on the ball and succeeded to focus on the fact that he is making songs to a rock band.
-The album has a clear line between the orchestral and band-songs. And to me an orchestra is just a fucking great sounding synthesizer! That's how I really think about it; one instrument among the others.
-Of course I must admit that sometimes I have lost he touch of reality. I've been married to this album. At times it has felt like I'd made 75 minutes of oatmeal in champagne sauce. But luckily it's not like that in reality. Every song has a strong soul.
And the soul is black. The first impression of the album is even oppressingly melancholy. The melodies has been loaded with sadness and the sense of giving up, which would even be recognizeable by a listener who doesn't know the history of the band. Tuomas nods his head and looks at the floor.
-Dark Passion Play is definitely our darkest album. It's also the saddest and most melancholy. There are two little highlights, positive moments. Amaranth and the instrumental one. Otherwise it's quite dark. At least on our scale.
If in the summer of 2004 released megalomaniac Once gave us things to chew on and digest, is there even more stuff in certain places now. Sustaining focus deserves special points this time. The album doesn't go into Indians and Finnish songs this time.
New element this time is celtic instruments which were used in the orchestral recordings in Abbey Roads Studios. From Finland the album has a kantele-player Senni Eskelinen.
Controlling the mass has taken a lot from Tuomas, who is also a producer of the album. The feeling of relief hit him a couple of months ago. An important moment was when the last vocals and pianos had been recorded. After that the mixing began.
-Bloat-heavy is the term we are trying to launch here, Tuomas laughs. -Hopefully certain fullness is a mark of a lasting album. At least it has stuff to get back to. Once had a maximum of 170 tracks in use at the same time. (not sure about the word "track", I don't know anything about CD's grin.gif ). Now we'll definitely go over 200. Though it's not an end in itself. Also 5.1. mix is on the plan.
-Definitely. And it's worthwile to do it now, so we don't have extra work more than about a week. Though Once's 5.1. version turned out to be a economical disaster. It has been sold only a bit more than thousand. The amount of home theatres is increasing, but I guess people don't realize you can go there go listen to music too.
To do something without holding anything back is easily costly. Making Once cost 230 000 euros. Now it's doubled. It makes things easier that in the conference table sits only the old members of the band: Tuomas Holopainen, quitarist Emppu Vuorinen, dummer Jukka Nevalainen and basist-singer Marco Hietala who together form Scene Nation Inc. They didn't need to conciliate the recording company at any stage.
-We pay everything ourselves. And about half a million it took alltogether, Tuomas states. -But now or never we had to do everything we wanted. I mean if you think where we are right now as a band. We just wanted to do everything better and bigger than last time. And Pip (Williams) for example said that for all these things couple of days isn't enough. So we were in Abbey Road for eight days. It was salty (meaning expensive) but definitely worth it.
Along with their own songs for the album Nightwish recorded an originally instrumental song to which Tuomas had made lyrics. The famous composer of the song didn't warm up for the version.
-I guess I can tell it, yeah. It was Michael Nyman's theme for the movie Piano, Tuomas tells. (I LOVE LOVE LOVE that song and now I possibly have to send death threats to Michael Nyman...) -The song was originally going to be a b-side, but it seems we aren't allowed to publish it at all. We can dig it at home.
Now Amaranth-single's b-side will be "some song's orchestral version", Amaranth's demo and Holopainen and Markku Pölönen's song for the movie Lieksa!, While Your Lips Are Still Red. The assembly is a kind of mini-Nightwish
-Marco sings, and it was made seperately from these sessions at Tero Kinnunen's place. Jukka plays a bit of drums in it and Marco acoustic bass. There's no quitar. So it's basically not a Nightwish-song, but I don't want to publish anything with my own name.
Tuomas's big job that started in October 2005 is starting to get over. Or it's at the beginning. Depends how you take it. After making Amaranth's video and having two listening sessions for the album, follows promotional tour. Then they have a couple of weeks holiday during Midsummer. After the time in Helsinki he misses the woods, lakes and more peaceful life.
-But it's okay, he leans backwards and sounds like a ice hockey coach who says "we got what we came for". Then the tought returns to the present. We have been talking for over an hour and Anette's name is available for all who wants to know it pretty soon.
-I'm surprisingly little nervous about what's going to happen in two hours and twelve minutes. I play my own game, heh heh.

"If a beginner was put into this place..."

Nightwish's sixth studio album's vocals were recorded in Petrax studios, Hollolla in March. There were quite happy musicians there. Anette Olzon, found after long and throughout search, had already shown her suitableness for the band and the new album was almost done.

Petrax, Hollola, 12. March 2007
-The writer of the article steps in to the studios and realises he has seen Anette before at Tarot's gig in Tampere. Ewo had introduced her as his Swedish cousin. Ewo laughs.
-Anette seems to get along very very well with the boys

-Anette comes from a musical family and has been singing for ever
-She got to know Nightwish only after Tarja was fired
-At the end of the year 2005 she recieved an answer from Tuomas that he really liked her version of Ever Dream
-Then all this child-thingies and how she was stubborn
-They got along very well from the beginning
-She got to go to Tuomas' island
-She was very nervous about getting the job, and very, very happy when she got it. She had to come up with all kinds of excuses for her Finland-trips
-She thinks some of the Nightwish songs are good for her voice, some aren't. She really likes Eva and it makes her cry.
-Recording wasn't always easy, she had some troubles with half-notes because she hadn't sung them for a long time. She was a bit worried, but she practiced and it worked out well.
-Once Tuomas asked if she could jojk. She didn't first understand what he wanted, but she tried something. The boys were very exited, the liked it a lot.
-Tuomas is the boss of the band and tells her how to sing his songs, but he isn't a tyrant, he listens to her opinions too.