Years ago I thought I'd form a blog for this music project too, Focus Minus, but it didn't happen because I felt I didn't want to "explain" anything about Focus Minus. It felt appropriate to not to write anything about it. To keep it "mysterious" that way. What changed my mind then? Time, kind of.
It's now been 5+ years from the previous album which came out in early 2011. Originally I had an idea for the two albums only, those that came out in 2010 and 2011 - two albums with 13 songs in each, and going through the alphabets and telling a tale with the song titles, combined with songs themselves. This was especially evident in the 2011 album.
I thought I'll explain some backgrounds about Focus Minus to begin this blog with, since ... I have a feeling I might be actually continuing Focus Minus at some point. Some new equipment for soundworks, some ideas being formed for new material ... you can guess where you can read more about it when it happens. Yes; here in this blog.
So, history time: Focus Minus was born while recording Scumfusion's album called "a Lossidian threnody" in late 2009. That Scumfusion album was the first album where space soundscapes were decidedly created and used together with the grindcore material. While creating the space soundscapes, I happened to create some really cool, dark ambient sounds with guitar only - it was soon clear to me, that they couldn't be all used in the Scumfusion context. Scumfusion was about extreme metal after all and I didn't want to turn it into dark ambient project suddenly. So, ... the idea for dark ambient side project came to me about as fast. Like this Scumfusion connection wasn't enough, the whole project name "Focus Minus" is an anagram of ... Scumfusion! Just put the letters into different order and there you go. Focus Minus felt like a perfect name for a strange dark ambient project. And it connects literally to Scumfusion - you could say it's the completely different alter ego of Scumfusion.
Originally the idea was to use just electric guitar for all the soundscapes, and nothing else. That's how the debut album ("Within the colors of space") ended up being, too. There wasn't a long break between the first and the second album ("Magic pad cult [galactic dump]"), which had a bit different approach technically speaking though; a bassguitar was added to the list of instruments used. And one song even has primitive programmed drumbeat to it. But both of these first two albums shared something else in common, too: The idea of "not planning the music that is being recorded pretty much live and not fixed even a bit afterwards" ... that might sound bit freaky, but that's how they were recorded. Multiple layers of sounds per song, each recorded with one take only. And it was all done intentionally in an unlit room, during the so-called polar night season in north Finland. So black was really black, that goes well with space sounds, space tales, space theme. And if that wasn't enough, while recording the "songs", I pretty much recorded all the takes with eyes closed, feeling the sounds and adjusting to the creation as it was happening. It was rewarding, in a way that's hard to explain.
So, as you can guess, all that gives an interesting setting to continue this weird project someday. The day might be closer than you think - or even closer than I personally think, but we shall see when it happens. Until then ...
... you could check out my latest space themed music release if slow, drone'ishy doom metal means anything for you. This scifi doom piece came out only yesterday.
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