A weekend with Mäläskä

It is really inspiring to make music in another, unfamiliar environment.
For the third time Petter and I went to such a place to try out another setup and create new stuff with Mäläskä.

This year we drove to the province of Friesland, and settled in Jannum; a small village near Dokkum.
The wonderful landscape, looking out over the Dokkumer Ee, on which the Elfstedentocht passed for the last time in 1997.


Our creative weekend started Friday 29 November. And Monday 2 December - the day we had to return to our nomal lifes - was already there before we actually noticed.

Friday afternoon we set up our equipment in a comfortable way. You can see a timelapse of this here: https://youtu.be/_ToGBj7PB18
In the evening we did the first two sessions, which felt slightly searching.

Petter brought with him a laptop running Ableton and linked to an Akai controller, some rack synths, a synth-guitar with the necessary effects.

The setup which I have been using for quite a while was slightly adjusted. This time consisting of my Korg Kronos, Roland Juno 106, Novation Supernova 2, Korg MS20, Access Virus TI and Clavia Nord Rack 2.

Almost the entire Saturday we played and recorded 6 inspiring sessions.

Just like last year's weekend in Vledderveen, Bas Broekhuis joined us on Sunday, bringing along his hang drums, cajon and electronic percussion. Throughout the day and evening there were recorded 4 sessions together.

The Monday we mainly used to pack our equipment, but in the first three days we recorded around 11 hours of music.

In the meanwhile I made some quick mixes, and started to listen to all recordings.
Normally I can still remember what I have played recently, but it might have been the combination of the extremely relaxed atmosphere, state of mind, and perhaps the fact that we were fully focussed on creating music the entire weekend, which resulted into some very unexpected output when listening the first couple of recordings afterwards.
Not exactly as planned (which is the most exciting about our musical approach) we seem to have been in an ambient mood largest part of the weekend, which resulted into some serious space trips.

Coming days Petter and I will be listening to the remaining recorded material, and discuss future plans for Mäläskä.

To be continued...