Sestina, part II

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 name for a band, if used, is bound to sooner or later result to copious indulgence in artsy stuff

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So...let us continue, from part one, our glorious saga of blown fuses and ringing ears.


Since Sestina never really broke up, I always had this nagging sensation that something was about to happen with the band - I just never knew what or when. I still held close contact with most of the band members, and often we talked about doing something. It felt there was a lot of untapped potential with this group - however, the right time and opportunity for an outlet seemed to evade us. So we waited. And waited.

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Surprisingly, this state of non-activity lasted for a better part of half a decade - a long time to hold out hope after such a short-lived project. During this period, I dabbled with different concepts for the band. I couldn't maintain interest for the straight-forward 1-2-3-4 rock song for very long, so a lot of my ideas started getting a bit...out there. At one point, during a bout of depression, I was even intent on turning the band into an 6-8 piece enseble of two standing drummers, cellist, violinist, guitarist and bassist, screamer and singer, performing a fully arranged musical mass written in english and latin about carnality. Not kidding. I even wrote a lot of it, and it's still hidden away in my hard drive. Lord help us if I some day end up bringing out some of that stuff. Would've loved to see the guys faces at our band practice, though.

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Yours truly way back when, trying his damndenest
to make Sestina into an art school project

I gradually did regain my senses - and more importantly, my health. While embarking on an enlightening journey of self-discovery known as "pulling ones head out of own ass", I realized that I had perhaps taken a completely wrong approach: Sestina didn't need any high concept, just a group of passionate, motivated people united in the task of creating something awesome. After all, in the past all the best stuff I've been involved with were always group efforts - there may have been songs that someone wrote, but if the songs were elevated from good to great, it happened because of a collaborative effort.


So instead of trying to come up with "the perfect approach", I started making actual phone calls to actual band members. Pekka, Jaakko and Tommi were still very much into it, so the core group was there. It (finally) dawned on me too that three guitarists was a silly idea, so to wash away the distorted mush we opted to bring in some new blood. We called up Tommi Forsström, an old friend of ours and an all-around great guy, to join in cooking up something new with us. And this time, we wanted synths!


Tommi (F) was interested, but as usual, also very busy. So we didn't make any grand plans for the band, but just listened to a lot of different songs by different bands, and brainstormed together what kind of music would be original and fun to make. Our first (and only) band practice with this line-up was both Tommi (R) on guitar, Jaakko on synths & synth-bass, and Tommi (F) on drums - Pekka couldn't be there on that day. We worked on a song sketch I'd made; what we went for was trying to discover something new and inspiring, but it all felt a bit like grasping at straws. This wasn't a band, but the most basic building blocks of a band attempting to become organized. We didn't even know what instruments each of us was going to play.

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Who knows, it could have become something amazing. But in the end, the thing fell apart because individual members just didn't have enough time for a project that needed a lot of love and attention to even find a direction.

It looked like another long hiatus for Sestina was looming on the horizon. But this time, it fortunately didn't prove to be as long.

...but more on that on part 3.

~ Markus

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Some music tactfully tasted and unceremoniously spat out during the writing of this blog:

Killing Joke - Absolute Dissent

Sestina - scetches for a musical mass (see above)

Type O Negative - Bloody Kisses, October Rust, World Coming Down

Kyuss - Blues for the Red Sun

Mew - Frengers etc.

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