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Last Sunday I started with reading one of the pretty depressing psalms in the bible. It's one of the psalms that David wrote when Saul and his army was after him. I can't say that I have ever been in that position, but one day earlier I was in big trouble on the highway because one of the wheels on my car almost came off, and later that Sunday somebody broke into my car and stole my laptop. I am just beginning to realize how many pieces of my life I had in that computer and which is now (probably) gone forever. Music and lyrics that I had not stored anywhere else. All my email contacts. Pictures of friends and family. Even the stuff that I have backed up feels like a burden right now, because I need to buy a new computer and start building everything from the ground again. I feel depressed and tired when I think of the things I have lost and all the work that lies ahead. But I am thankful when I think about that I still have a better life than the person who stole my laptop. I am also grateful that the problem with my car was solved because the Lord sent a man to me who had all the tools to help me in a garage two minutes away. He works with Harley Davidsson which means this is the second time a Harley Davidsson guy saves me in traffic. I am also grateful that I realize I have so much to be happy about when I think about all the things I lost in the computer. The same day the computer got stolen I was in church and witnessed Tobias and his wife Frida bring their four months old son Elvin for dedication to the Lord, and nothing you can store in a computer is as valueable as what I witnessed there. The day my computer got stolen ended with a joke of some kind. When I came to the police station to report the incident I took a number to wait in line. The number I got was 112, which is the number you dial for an emergency (911 in America). Yeah, that's a joke, but should I laugh or cry?

The second guest

Yesterday we had a visitor from another of Sweden's neighboring countries. We tried a lot of diffrent things in studio, but we focused on one special song where she will be part of a trio of great singers from three different countries. Her name will not be announced yet, because we like to keep this idea a secret for a little longer. But we know that we will have reason to mention her name many times in the future. Because we know that Praise Unit will do more things with her in the future. The trio will feature on the song "God I love you", and if you saw Praise Unit when we opened for Kirk Franklin in Sweden or in Germany you heard this song. We opened with "God I love you" both in both countries.

Photos

I´m back after meeting with Mattias Käll, the designer of the cover and booklet for the Mission Field CD. He´s a great guy with lots of creative ideas and I´m sure that he will do an awesome job with the CD cover and booklet. We shared som ideas and thoughts about the photos for the booklet and many of our ideas were the same. It felt like we had a quite similar view on what they should look like. That´s a good start I think. Lets just hope that the photos turn out the way we planned ( I guess that´s my job).

The photosessions are planned for next weekend, we´ll get back with reports from there...........

Check out Mattias homepage to see what he´s done before. www.mattiaskall.se

Now I really want to go out in the sun.

/ Jakob

What to wear?!

Yesterday Sara and me, Felicia, met up for a quick "fika" (a Swedish expression for having coffee, tea or something else to drink and maybe having a cinnamonbun to eat), Sara tired from a long day of work and me a bit feverish. The two of us are responsible for the styling for the album booklet and it's time to decide what look to go for. What are we supposed to wear? What colours? Makeup? Hair?

We have an existing co-operation with a Swedish clothing brand called NINAQI. For those of you who have seen us live during the last year, you might have noticed we all wear the same jeans in our live shows? Those are the NINAQI jeans. NINAQI is a great company that we are very glad to be able to work together with. For every pair of jeans sold, 10 % of the profit is donated towards the fight against AIDS. If you want to know more about their jeans, and maybe buy a pair yourself, please visit their website at www.ninaqi.com

As for our little meating yesterday, we came up with some really good ideas.
To know what they were... check out the album when it's released!

CD cover

This friday I will meet up with Mattias Käll who will do the CD cover design. We are going to talk about pictures in the cover. Even though I´m not a professional photografer I´ve been asked to take pictures of the group for the CD. I´m very excited but also a little bit nervous about doing it. So it will be nice to hook up with Mattias and take a look at some of his ideas, and hopefully the result will be great. I think so since everyone is so beautiful.....it´s hard to mess it up. I don´t know who will take my pictures but I guess we´ll work it out.

I`ll let you know how the meeting went.

Blessings

/ Jakob

We announce the first guest on our CD

Our neighbours in Norway have many great things that we don't have in Sweden. One thing is the Soul Children phenomena, which is directed by the very inspiring Ragnhild Hiis-Ånestad. When I was a kid we had a similar thing in Sweden that we called "Unga Röster", and the Soul Children of Norway is something similar, but more organised, more updated and more established in the whole country. There are Soul Children choirs all over Norway and I pray that we will get it in Sweden too. I know we have thousands of kid's choirs in Sweden, but I think that for a kid it's cool to be part of a nation wide choir and meet once a year for a great festival. Not only sing in your local choir. Yesterday me and Tobias had the opportunity to record the original Soul Children, the one from Oslo. It was a fantastic experience for us, because those kids hold nothing back when they sing! There was so much joy in the room and me and Tobias made up a lot of extra things to record just so we could hear them more. In this video clip you might get a hint of the feeling in the room. Listen for their sound on the song "Grab the sun".

Feels good to be back

I´m back home after one week of work at a camp for people with autism. I´ve had a great week and I always feel very blessed after these camps. I learn a lot from hanging out with those people that looks like me in many ways but that also are very different from myself. And after one week without a computer and internet it feels good to enter this blog and see what my friends in Praise Unit´s been up to. The recording is obviously continuing acording to plan. Exept working with the album we are trying to schedule for conserts this summer. We have many invataitions and now it´s just the matter of making sure we have singers and a band that´s available these dates. If you want Praise Unit to visit your city, don´t hesitate to contact us.

bless
/ Jakob

Special guests

On "the Mission Field" we are very happy and excited about having guests from different parts of the world. On wednesday this week me and Tobias will go to Oslo, Norway, to record some very talented people who have a kind of energy that it might be difficult for Praise Unit to match. Praise Unit will do a song called "Grab the sun" together with these singers. If you want to know who they are you will have to wait just a little longer.

Påskakärringar

If you live in Sweden easter time is a time when the kids dress up like "påskakärringar", which is a kind of good witches, and walk door to door and do the trick-or-treat procedure. There are a lot of different traditions around easter all around the world. Some say that the story about Christ and how he rose from death is just one of many traditions around this time of year. But it's a fact, whether you like it or not, that what happened to Jesus in Jerusalem 2000 years ago has changed history more than any other historical event you can think of. The death of Jesus affects you, no matter who you are, where you live and what you believe in. So in my opinion it's not really just an easter tradition. And if you think about how much the drama on Calvary changed history for all of us, it's strange that some people only talk about it around easter, and maybe not even then. I believe that Jesus rose from the dead and that he has an impact on my life in everything I do. Sometimes it does not make a big difference, like when I cut my hair, but sometimes it makes all the difference, like when I make music together with Praise Unit. And I am grateful for every minute I feel his presence.

Pictures

Here comes some pictures to=)

recording!

For three days, me and Julia have been recording in Tobbes studio. He really is DA BEST, pushing and encourage us to reach the high notes!!We´ve been singing, laughing, drinking water and singing again.
Watch us go crazy at the end of the third day!

Blessings
Josefine

Thank you sopranos!

Now, Julia and Josefine have finished their recordings. Pheew!! They did an amazing job during this past three days. Most of the songs are very demanding for the sopranos and I can't believe they made it all in three days. Here is a litte video clip from yesterday..



It's a miracle that their voices didn't break. We have a good God.

I think Josefine took some nice pictures today. She might put some of them here.

Good night!

The cello

Emilia is not only one of our great singers, but she also plays great cello. Yesterday she recorded some really nice lines for two of the songs on "the Mission Field". Unfortunately I forgot my camera so I did not get a picture of her playing the cello, which would have looked really nice. But I searched the net and I found this picture instead.

Keyboards and sopranos

Two days ago, Kristian and I started recording keyboards. It wasn't our lucky day though. First, we had to travel more than an hour to borrow a vintage Whurlizer piano and a good tube guitar amp. When we finally had everything hooked up and started to play, we realized the Whurlizer had some problem with the line signal and had a key that was totally out of pitch. At first we tried to fix the problems, but we gave up. Then we decided to start recording Rhodes piano instead. But then the amp had some kind of buzz-sound every time we played a low A-note... Then we tried recording through a bass amp and also with a line signal, but the sound was way to clean. Eventually we solved the problem by recording with the guitar amp at a lower volume. But both Kristian and I were feeling a bit sick, so we did two songs and then gave up. All days can't be successful. We'll try some other day, with an other Whurlizer.

Now, most of the altos and tenors have recorded all the songs. It sounds amazing. Today we'll start recording the sopranos. We have three whole days in the studio, and I hope we'll make it. But the sopranos have some hard work ahead. They have the highest, but also the most important notes to sing. But I'm not worried, they are great.

Blessings

Nothing...

...happened today.

Two more nights in the studio

Hi!
I just wanna let you guys know that the altos now have finished their work on the CD.
Two nights in a row the altos + ToeB (not only a great bassplayer but also an awesome producer!)have been in the studio and things have gone really well! It takes a lot of time to record vocals if you really wanna get right, but we have so much fun while doing it. To make sure no other sound than our vocals get in the mics the recording room has to be totally soundproof. That excludes having open doors and windows to keep the air fresh and cool in there, so as the hours pass it just gets hotter and hotter in the studio. I took some photos during the recording session the other day but realized we were all blushing red on them due to the heat...I won't upload them, but I got a few pics of Maria and ToeB looking great!=)

You might a thousand or a few proven miracles if you want the truth or something else...

Even though we spend a lot of time arranging the music and trying different sounds on the songs, we try to never forget that every little note we sing and play is a tool to deliver our message. We try hard to make the lyrics make sense, grammatically as well as artistically, because we believe that what we have to say is important.

When the tenors had recorded 17 songs the last weekend there was only one line left to record on a song called "Open". For some reason it seemed impossible to find the perfect words for that particular line and we spent a lot of valuable recording time only trying to find what to sing in that particular phrase. Finally we believe we got the right words, and we like how it came out. So when you listen to this song on "the Mission Field" remember that there is one particular line that me, Tobias, Jakob and Jacob worked together with for a very long time, so that it would sound right in your ears.