In the summer of 2013, the six of us returned to the studio to record our second album. Recordings took place at school once again, because we needed instruments that we didn't acquire, of course. That means, that we could find anything we needed at school. Fortunately we had two whole months available, as it was holiday time and obviously I had no lessons.
So, it was high time we showed each other what we had written and of course, time for me to lose the bet, because my music sounded like progressive rock combined with electronic and experimental music, that is exactly like I Robot. One morning, they left me at home sleeping and they obviously went at the recording session. Then, I was woken up by a call: "Who is it?", I said bleary-eyed.
"Hi, Ingrid, it's us. Come to the studio, now", Vivian's voice was heard.
"But why have you left me sleeping?", I complained.
"Oh, stop complaining and come! Get ready and be here as quick as you can. Or you can ask your father to take you".
Fortunately, my dad eventually took me to school and during all the way he was talking to me about irrelevant stuff. I was only shaking my head, pretending I was paying attention to him, but in fact, my mind was thinking of other things. Eventually, he realised and asked me: "Is everything ok with the band?"
"Yeah!", I said. "However the other guys told me to come very quickly at the session, even though it was them the ones who left me sleeping. I'm sure they are cooking up something".
"They might have a surprise for you. Who knows?"
Entering the recording room, I realised that, while in a hurry, I forgot to bring my demo cassettes. However, it was proved that this wasn't needed at all. I found the others sitting around a computer with Vivian in the middle, who said when she saw me: "Good morning, little virtuosa". I remained still for a while, looking at them, as if I were an alien that just fell to earth, but Dina said: "Youngster, I'm afraid you lost the bet".
I seemed not to be able to grasp a thing, but Vivian showed me the cassettes. The cassettes with my own demos! These urchins boned them, that's why they left me sleeping at home!
"Well, this reminds me of progressive rock blended with electronic music. This is what Alan Parsons did for the first time", Vivian said.
"So....", I tried to complain.
"So, this is the best thing you could ever write. Congatulations! Now we can move to anooooother level and we are about to become a number one band". I started laughing at Vivian's nonsense words. Then, she patted me on the back and whispered: "You lost the bet and I still expect to see your video".
And indeed, in the end they filmed me standing on a table and singing USSR anthem! And I can tell that this was a rather traumatic experience for me.
We spent the rest of the summer recording. As I previously mentioned, this album was composed by the whole band together. However, I had something in my mind, which belong exclusively to my own ideas. I didn't want us to do the same things that we did with Endless Quest, but have a musical style a bit over the top. I needed a teeming sound with every kind of instruments. For that, a Hammond Organ wasn't enough. Obviously, we could use it as the base of the songs, however the main melody should be given to other instruments. Even though I had always believed that I would never become inspired by heavy music, there was a band I was a huge fan of: Stratovarius. What they did and amazed me most of all, was that in their solos they were alternating electric guitar with synthesizers and they used to play these solos in a great speed. What I mean, is that I would love us to have something like this in our album, without that meaning that the beat would sound like metal.
Thus, when I started playing keys, I used as a core my typical sounds along with Hammond Organ, however the main melody of my songs consisted of bizarre sounds. Unfortunately, I didn't have an analog synthesizer, in which you install your own sounds from the computer, nor did I use any computer programme, as I didn't have the slightest idea about how these work. I was using, though, a Korg keyboard, which I'd found at school, and I can tell for sure that it did a great job and acquired also a vast amount of sounds.
Very often, I was on my own in the recording room, so I didn't have anybody above my head listening to what I was playing. During those moments, I would find the chance to do any crazy thing that was in my head on the synthesizer. Furthermore, I was saying to the technicians who were helping (because it was impossible that they would also leave) to find me any weird small objects and marbles they could:
"Let's be quick, before the others arrive".
I would place all these weird objects and marbles on the synthesizer, I was soupping up with the sound system, making weird sounds, so I could produce something more odd. And of course, I used all the sounds from the keyboard's Synth/Lead Pad category. But I could do all these things in a very short time and the others hadn't even noticed what I had been involved with all this time. While they were around, I would record my Hammond Organ sound, like a good girl. I had given this album a vast sound, so that it could be similar to some '70s British instrumental prog songs and something like light or dream pop. Finally, I sang female vocals for the second time. However, as I previously mentioned, I had ceased to have any sort of contact with Timo, that's why vocals were sung exclusively by Bryan, who had this aetherial voice and a Yorkshire accent and matched with Dina's and Lydia's voices. And for the first time ever, I felt satisified with the sound of the synth, in contrast to our first album, where we couldn't achieve having the sound that we wanted, in the first place. But now, after having searched too much, we found the suitable crew that helped us with all these sound systems, even though Samantha once seemed to be nowhere.
The album was recorded in the summer, however we were mostly playing our instrumental parts. That's why not all lyrics were written. We had a topic in our mind and it was about themes, we were talking about that summer, however there were still gaps we needed to fill. Fortunately, we weren't blocked by that, exactly because I had started to search for even more stuff. During that time, I was in the last grade of High School and this meant that I had to study a lot. And I was interacting with even more people, exactly because during this year I wasn't living in the backwoods anymore. On the contrary, during the days of the week I would sleep at my friends' place, who were living at the centre of Kirkenes, close to school. And this was very helpful, because on the one hand I wouldn't lose so much time commuting, as our house was about 15 kilometres away from the centre. Furthermore, I would study along with my friends, thus I would be more focused, while back at the village I would be constantly outdoors, walking in nature and I wouldn't be studying at all. It's not that I didn't like studying, Even in the studio, when recording, every time apart from cables and wires, there are also books I bring with me, when leaving home, which are also the source of inspiration for our albums. However studying is completely different, when you need to sit for the exams and you are also under pressure. And of course, a teenage kid also wants to have a life!
I wanted to study Geology in Tromsø University. Johanna had told me that I could come and stay at her own place, however I refused, because it was impossible for me to impose to her for at least three or four years. So, I was about to rent a house somewhere and I hoped that it was going to be somewhere in the ourskirts and not in the city centre. And in order that I could pass the exams, as my friends were persuading me, I had to study intensively for a whole year. That was tiring, of course, but what I was reading was food for thought for the album. Because I could also find a lot of books, which far from the fact that they were scientific, they could open your mind and the writers' ideas were very inspiring and thought-provoking. They made a strong criticism against a few social phenomena, with which we had probably grown up, but we had never gotten the chance to be sceptical about them, but we would just swallow them up, as if they were food. That's why we wanted to call our album Your Fantasy World, giving, albeit implicitly, an ironic colour to it. Because, amongst other things, the album was criticising also leaders, who were trying to have a power at the society's expense, we would strongly criticise religion, superstition, and in general blind faith in anything, which evidence is missing from.
During October, we spoke in two interviews: one in Norway and one in Ireland,in which we spoke about the album we would release. The Norwegians were really looking forward to it, because they thought that these issues were really interesting in a rock album On the other side of the coin was Ireland, as we expected it to be, where reaction was huge. Many Irish people are unfortunately, conservatives, sectarists and faithful Catholics, that's why the fact that we were talking against religion is something they considered to be really blasphemous and that the album, in general, had no fantasy at all. The latter made a great sense, because the Irish people expected us to deal with issues related to legends. That's because they knew the album, that Johanna and I had made. And indeed Uaithnia was related to fantasy worlds, tales, alchemy, and, of course, people knew that I always loved stories and tales.
Before we released the album, we went to mix and master the album. Then, the rest of the guys asked me: "How the hell have you made the synthesizer sound like that?" I smiled widely and of course, didn't tell them my secret. And everybody who listened to it at the studio for the first time was taken aback and when it was complete, we invited in some journalists, in order to listen to it and write their critics and they considered that such an album hasn't been ever written since 40 years. It was true that we went exremely over the top in progressive rock, mixing thousands of sounds with each other, exactly like Stratovarius did and we were creating a dialogue between synthesizers and electric guitars. The rhythm was also very complex and every day I was suffering from severe pains in my fingers and wrists, because I was trying to play keyboard solos in an excessively fast speed. What is more, as I said before, this album wasn't based so much in Hammond Organ, but in keyboard sounds, that I hadn't ever used before, and I don't think I'll ever do.
The album's cover depicted a weird creature, which for us symbolised the populists, who were fooling the society. Indeed, this creature was similar to something like a mixture of Munch's Scream, the Flying Spaghetti Monster and the cover of In the Court of the Crimson King. The album was released in November and we did only a very small tour, because I had to study for my exams.
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