#lapland

Lean-to in Lapland

Finland

I miss the wilderness of Finland.

According to the book, the Most Dangerous Game of all is another man with a gun… This story is set in northern Finland in the area from Rovaniemi to Ivalo with the denouement on the Russian side of the Finnish border where the strands of the story are tied together. Bill Cary is a float-plane pilot in northern Finland who smokes a lot, drinks a lot, and gets into many scrapes. He flies…

So Zaga is dead. After 6 1/2 years, and 16 songs released, I decided it wasn't really worth the energy necessary. We had one final song about 95% ready to release, but for reasons, it will likely never be released. But you might be wondering why only 16 songs released in such a long time. Surely, we had more stuff in the chamber, ready to rock, right?

We had dozens of songs, written by both the guitarist, Jukka, and me. We also had a handful of more collaborative songs (a la "The Package"), in various stages of readiness. There were probably about 10 songs pretty much finalized, and then another 20 in various demo stages.

Since I only write certified bangers, I've decided I'm going to try to record and release some of these songs under the ol' Chelonaut band name.

I'm also going to take the opportunity to try out some different methods for recording and processing tracks and songs.

One of my great hopes for Zagarmatha was that we could lean into the weirdness and fun of recording and processing, but another member of the band felt differently and was always pushing for a radio-friendly clean sound. It really hamstrung the creative juices at times.

So with that being said, I've already got one song underway. The lyrics are from old OLD Zagarmatha, before I had any role in writing music for the band. It's a ditty called Somnor, and it's a CERTIFIED BANGER.

I'll try to detail the various recording and processing techniques here, as I did in the ol' Chelonaut days, both for anyone interested ...

And as a record for myself. It's always good to keep track of what works, what doesn't work, and what's just weird enough to be fun. :)