Astral Sleep

2008-2010 - The Making of "Angel"

When the debut album "Unawakening" was released, it received contradictious welcome among the media. Some referred it to loads of crap/vomit, but some wrote that it was a masterpiece. We were not completely satisfied with the album, for various of reasons. First of all we did not have the skills to mix it professionally, so the album was mixed by Solitude Productions, but they changed some artistic facts about the album for the sake to make it sound more professional. Second thing was that the songs were not fully composed to maximum performance, and there were too many intros/interludes/outros. Despite these facts, "Unawakening" was a great album and we are still on this date amazed by the visionary compositions it carried with it. We are still playing some tracks from "Unawakening" live, not because of lack of material, but because the songs sound great played with the skills we have today.

06.06.2008 Astral Sleep entered D-Studio in Klaukkala, Finland to record a mini album. The songs were written in very short period of time, each founding member (Markus, Jaakkko & Rolle) writing one track of their own. There were two main reasons to do this album quickly. First reason was to introduce the playing of our first fulltime drummer, Jiri, on record. The second reason was to have an album that would be ready to be released once the band would go back active. Astral Sleep was on a one year break during the time when Markus and Jaakko completed their mandatory service in the Finnish Army.

The first two gigs were held on autumn 2009 in small clubs in Helsinki, Finland, called Heavy Corner and Lepakkomies, alongside with great finnish bands Colosseum & Saattue. The gigs were ok, more info on them can be found on the "LIVE"-section. We are hoping to get back on stage to present new material from the album "Angel".

2006-2007 - The Making of "Unawakening"

After the release of S/T, we mostly studied the reviews that the demo had. Most reviewed it pretty average, but fortunately there were some who thought it was a masterpiece! However, some new material had been coming up for a while and in the spring of 2006, 5 new songs were ready. The band had very much of a consern, which of these tracks would end up to the next demo. After lot's of thoughts and crazy ideas, one stood stronger than the others: To record a full lenght album.

This would mean many times more pain, tears and mental sickness than recording a demo, since all the equipment were very poor and none of the members had much experience in album recording. But it didn't matter. It had to be done, using mostly same methods as in the demo. This time, there were no limits on anything, time being the least of them.

But there was another problem: Who would play the drums? The solution was not too hard: Tommi Häyrynen, an old friend of Markus agreed to the task after hearing the material. The full band had couple of rehearsals in summer.

Anyhow, there still was problems, the greatest of them being the method of recording the drums. Since the first demo was recorded using one microphone for the whole drumkit, the same method would not work on an album that should sound as much studio produced as possible.

But in the autumn, band was in a hurry. There were no signs of drumtracks, so the album had to be done the Astral Sleep way. In 15.08.2006 Markus started recording the guitar tracks for the first album. A little later Jaakko's bass and Rolle's guitars were also recorded over a digitally created clumsy drumtracks.

The progress was slow, and the next steps were executed in November 2006, when Markus moved to his first own apartment, which living room served as the recording space of the drums. Tommi, the friend of Markus came over one weekend to record the drums using an electronic drumkit owned by Rolf Pilve, who played the drums on the first demo "S/T". Once again Rolf was a great help, thanks!

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