Sestina, Part I

Sestina

(sĕ-stē'nə) 

n.

1. A verse form first used by the Provençal troubadours, consisting of six six-line stanzas and a three-line envoy.

2. A Finnish rock band that decided a girly name was the way to go

* * *

Dear friends,

You're reading the first blog contribution in the world of Sestina (the band). To start things off, I shall introduce you to the on/off -history of our dear little musical group.

You see, this isn't a project that got started yesterday; actually, Sestina has existed for almost a decade now as a ghost project, existing in varying degrees of activity in the sidelines of our other, "more important" bands.

At first, Sestina wasn't much more than a small bunch of songs and riffs I banged out for the fun of it. I had just returned to Finland after a short period of living in San Francisco, trying to find a footing in the big world with another band (also including Sestina drummer Pekka). Not much success in becoming Masters of the Known Universe, but I did come back with huge amounts of inspiration and ideas for a lot of music EXCEPT rock'n'roll (up until that point my chosen form of self expression).

I was really fed up to the teeth with the whole "loud guitars and a backbeat" -approach, which practically anyone could do, but almost no-one (including myself) seemed to be able to pull off with any degree of originality. However, eventually I did get the SERIOUS ART (:p) out of my system, and found myself longing for simple pleasures in life, such as hitting a power chord in front of a cranked Marshall stack set to bowel-emptying volume pressure levels.

Therefore, it didn't surprise me much when I found myself writing a lot of very meat-and-potatoes riffs and rock songs. Having The Foo Fighters' "The Colour and the Shape" and Helmet's "Aftertaste" in heavy rotation at the time pretty much dictated the genre - simple, straightforward power pop / heavy rock.

I wrote maybe five complete songs just for fun, after which I realized I really wanted to play them with a band. So, on to the next phase: Getting a band together.

* * *

Finding a drummer was a no-brainer - me and Pekka Ollila had grown up together as kids and as musicians, and he's just one of those people I completely get along with and can communicate with in a very immediate way - a big benefit for being in a band together. Plus, he's a great drummer.

Coming in to fill the ranks were my friends Jaakko Pulkki (bass) and Tommi Raivio (guitar). Both had been in a band called Jonah Eyes Open (previously Benefit), which I unabashedly loved, so I really wanted to play with them. Fortunately both of the guys said yes, so the backbone for Sestina was set.

After my dry, artsy spell, I had a craving for a wall of distorted guitar noise. As a result, the songs had quite big arrangements - not for one, for two, but for three guitarists. Pekka, Jaakko and Tommi rolled their collective eyes at this excess, but fortunately let me indulge myself.

So we persuaded one more friend to come along: Heikki Rita from Funktion A.D. and Circus of Flesh. However, pretty soon after joining Heikki had to step down due to personal reasons, so to fill in for him we invited Mikko Raita, who would later work with us behind the mixing table.

* * *

So the band was together, but we didn't have any great plans - save for playing live and recording some tunes. So in the spirit of fun, that's what we did: We booked a show in Semifinal, Helsinki around Christmas time, and some studio time after New Years.

The show was a blast, and we recorded altogether seven songs in Helsinki's Seawolf Studios. It all happened very fast, and soon after we found ourselves with a pretty nice EP in hand, that none of us seemed particularly motivated to take anywhere.

At that point it just felt that the band had run that particular course, so we all went on to do other things - Jaakko did his Splitside / Radar -project, I concentrated on Nuria and Oka with Pekka, and the rest, I think, took a break from band activities altogether.

Ok, that's it for now. Next part coming soon: Reactivating the band, and rediscovering SERIOUS ART!

~ Markus

* * *

Music voraciously consumed while writing this blog:

Electric Wizard - "Black Masses"

Hurts - "Happiness"

Foo Fighters - "The Colour and the Shape"

Carcass - "Heartwork"

Richard Shindell

Sleep - "Dopesmoker"

Depeche Mode - "Sounds of the Universe"

* * *