What has happened lately?
OOOOoooo, so much. and I haven't been recording everything here as I should have. But let's do that now.
Let's see, after the succesful trip to Catalunya we kept our quarantine, and after that I started work in a local theater as a seamstress. It's been interesting work, rather tiring as well and time consuming since it's a regular ninetofive-job, and adding to that the work needed in a newly started Co Op, time has been really limited recently. During September and October there was also a construction job done in my apartment, so we had to live elsewhere for a while. That added some stress, to say the least.
In these three months the Covid situation was at first fairly good, but it turned worse and after a quite relaxed summer some limitations had to be re-instated. That meant bars having to close at an earlier hour and their capacity limited to half. Private parties and gatherings were also limited. The theater has been keeping up with half capacity and masks and regulations, and I've actually been lucky to have my job, when the situation for musicians has worsened every week. Our October was quite a contrast to that, because we seemed to have some kind of gig every weekend, in either a private party or the venues we had previously arranged a gig with. They wouldn't cancel, saying musicians have it hard enough already. All thanks to them!
We also had plans for a Halloween happening, which we started when the situation looked better. Our drummer has been arranging this happening for a number of years now, and it's basically a charity concert where the ticket sales profit goes to a charity purpose. So, the bands do volunteer work here. It's been a more Metal bands-driven thing, but this time around I wanted to make it an actual Goth band gathering. At first we had booked ourselves to play at a small local venue, that fits a hundred people. Then we decided to make it into Monsters of Turku, or rather Monsters of Halloween, since it was planned for the Halloween weekend.
I was so surprised to get three other bands to play at the event! One of them was a band that played with us at the same time at Lumous, called Agnosia. I also asked Ultra Noir and Murnau's Playhouse to come, and they all agreed! Epic fantasy coming true. When new regulations kicked in, Murnau had to cancel for personal reasons. But instead, Chaos Research agreed to come. Also the local Dj:s agreed to play their lists. In the last minute we actually managed to get a sound engineer to do the live mixing! This was actually a very very good thing, because doing it ourselves for four bands would have been an enormous amount of stress. I'm so grateful still, that all of them came to play and participate, and made this thing happen. There is not much Goth happening in Turku, so this was really important to me and it seems for a lot of people.
With new regulations the capacity of the venue was just 50 people, so the charity purpose had to be smaller in size. We decided to give the money to a school for a children's home, so they could buy art supplies for their students. I was hoping that some twenty people would show up at both night, but the first night there were fifty people. Fifty sold tickets! And the next night, when we played wasn't worse either. That's a nice sum for art supplies. The thing that really warmed my heart is that people came because they really missed live music and they said it was so lovely that somebody would arrange such a thing when everyone else is canceling events.
I know how it looks like to have an event during Corona time, but we did everything by the book and within regulations. The audience behaved well too. I haven't heard anybody getting sick after the event and I hope nobody has. Anyway, the situation is actually worse now than a month ago, so I'm happy we were able to do the event when we had the chance. Now is not a good time for events like that: In Helsinki area the audience for live music is now limited to 20 people and theaters and public places are now closed for a few weeks. There has been a bit af a controversy, because the limitations strike mostly the culture and music area, but shopping centers and such are open and free to have their Black Friday events. Seems a bit unfair, shall we say.
So we had gigs in October, and were able to save some money for the eventual printing of our debut album. Which is still almost ready, but not quite. We are not able to release it at the end of this year. But there's another side to that: We contacted a record label and there was a positive answer!! We have now had a few meetings with them and this time the content of the deal seems like something we have been looking for and that would benefit both parties. I have had really positive vibes about the meetings, and it seems we are really going to sign a deal this time. Woop, woop!! I'll tell you more about it, when the time comes. But now, it will take a month or so to finish everything and do the cover art as well. And that's why our album will be released early next year.
I would love to chat more, but time is limited and I have to continue with that cover art, do some work for the co op and rehearse... There are not enough hours in a day.
Thank you again for Monsters of Turku:
Agnosia
Ultra Noir
Chaos Research
Hateful Chains
The DJ:s of Club Undead
Jasse, from Aura Audio
