Oslo again

Tomorrow I leave for Oslo where I will meet the Soul Children again. This time it's a festival of 1500 kids and I am really excited about the kind of party it will be. I really look forward to hearing the kids, and also the other artists and instructors that will be there. It will be a weekend with friends from different parts of my life. Anki and Magnus Spångberg from my home town will be there, and they taught me my first gospel moves. Walt Whitman from Chicago will be there and he has inspired me a lot over the years with his friendship and his personality. Hans-Christian from Denmark will be there, and he is my first friend in the music industry from the only country in the world that has no mountain higher than a moose. There will also be a lot of new friends there. Another friend, Ragnhild, is the boss of the whole festival and she could write the book on how to inspire kids to sing. To meet all these people in one weekend is almost like a fairytale. Hmmm, somebody said something about Norway and fairytales. They like fairytales or fall in love with them or something like that.

Rolls

Last week I wrote in this blog about the percussion recording. I had been up late the night before the recording, and was hoping for a quick recording session with kristoffer on Saturday. But I was very wrong. We started 10.00 in the morning and we were finished 4.00 the next morning. But we worked very hard and efficient. Well, Kristoffer did most of the work of course. The reason it took so long was because once we started all kinds of great ideas came up. You will hear the traditional gospel tambourine on the CD, but also some weird instruments from the jungle of Borneo, a led pipe that used to be a part of truck, bells that somebody stole from an austrian goat and of course there are some nice rolls on the timpani. It all adds up to a really nice groove on the Praise Unit songs.

The surprise guest artist

The beautiful voice of the hard rocking finnish guest you can listen to in the previous video clip will unfortunately not be heard on the Praise Unit CD. When we realized that we have a singer who is already from Finland and has a very similar voice we decided to stick with what we have. Our finnish hard rocking friend will instead audition for Lordi, which is a group of orchs from the Mumin valley. We wish him luck!

Another guest appearance on the Praise Unit CD?

After many phone calls and correspondence, we finally had the pleasure of having a celebrity from Finland visiting our studio. He sang a wonderful tune that we know will fit perfectly on the new Praise Unit CD. It's great to get people from many different cultures involved in "The Mission Field". The Finnish guest star will most definitely be one of the highlights on the CD. Or what do you think?

Recording Vocals

Here are some pictures of us recording vocals for the upcoming Praise Unit CD. Time for us to do our share of the choir recording, in our studio in Örebro. It's nice to hear things starting to come together, we cannot wait to hear the final result!

Lina singing her heart out.


Johannes hitting those low notes.

Lina posing.

Johannes wondering what on earth he was singing.

Springtime

In Sweden we are enjoying a lovely spring right now. The lilac, the bird cherry and the apple trees are in full bloom and it smells so wonderful outdoors! Living here you can sometimes wonder why you put up with the cold during winter, but when spring comes around it's all worth it. Seeing God's creation coming to life again is astonishing, year after year!
Felicia

Midnight creativity

Yep... Jakob is right... me and Toe-B are marinading our brains in different kinds of Praise Unit arrangements these days. I know that they recorded Grand piano and Hammond organ a few days ago, and they seemed pleased with the sound. I could not be there so it will be a surprise for me what it sounds like. We don't use the piano on many songs, but there are one or two ballads where we use it, and also Kristian is playing some latin piano licks on one of the songs. That's going to add some nice flavor to the Praise Unit sound.

Tomorrow we will record percussion with Kristoffer. I should be asleep right now so that my ears are in good shape when we start recording, but there are too many things that need to be done. I guess if I am grumpy during the percussion recording I can take out on the cymbals or the congas or whatever. If I am too grumpy I might figure out something impossible for Kristoffer to play and then I can laugh while he is sweating over the complicated rhythm patterns... he he he... unfortunately Kristoffer is able to play almost anything so I don't think I have the energy to come up with something that impossible.

More reports from the percussion session will follow.

Just a hi....

Hi!

It´s been a while since I wrote something here....time flies this spring. One of the reasons I havn´t been writing for a while is that I havn´t been doing anything with the CD these past weeks. All choir tracks has been recorded and now it´s other things on the schedule and I´m sure Toe-B and Joakim is working just as hard as before. About the photos we took a few weeks ago I can let you know that Mattias, who is making the CD cover and booklet, was happy about them so we don´t need to have another photo session. That feels good!

Now I`m gonna go out and shoot some hoops in the swedish spring sun.

Bless you all
/ Jakob

Why a 3-year old kid would make a better president than Barack Obama!

There's a song called "My father" on the new Praise Unit CD. The lyrics for that song has been inside of me since I got a revelation from the bible verse where Jesus points to a child in the crowd and says that whoever humbles himself like that child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. The funny thing (or sad thing) is that in church we usually read that bible verse only when we have kids present, and we forget that Jesus was actually teaching the adults. When we want to nominate heroes we look for doctors, artists, politicians, authors and other great men and women who achieved a lot in their lives. But when Jesus was asked to answer who is the greatest among people he chose a child, even though Peter, John, James and the other apostles were present. Jesus said that we will never enter the kingdom of heaven unless we change and become like little children (I think it's important to make a note that he did not say "unless we change and ACT like little children", because we already act childish in many ways, but that's a different thing).

I am the father of two girls, Stella and Aina, and I have begun to realize the greatness in the relationship between a parent and the child. My children might cause me all sorts of troubles, but at the end of the day we always come back to the love we have for each other. And that in itself makes life so much easier for them, compared to if they would suddenly decide to turn to somebody else, or leave me, or pretend I don't exist, or subsitute my love for them with other emotions or material things. Nothing can substitute the love I have for my daughters and nothing can substitute the love God has for us.

The reason I say that a 3-year old kid is a better president than Barack Obama is not because I think that the brain of a little child can manage the complexity of governing a country. But I do know that when things go bad in our world we have a tendency to look at leaders, such as presidents, to take us out of the difficult situation. The result of such actions is the same as if my 3-year old daughter Aina would turn to that older kid in the playground to solve a problem instead of turning to me. But if instead we act like my daughter actually does when things go bad, which means turn to God, our father, with nothing but the intention of receiving his uncondintional love for us, then that would without a doubt make life so much easier.

Another guest from Norway

If you like gospelmusic scandinavian style there are many artists and groups you can add to your CD collection. But I know that a lot of people say that Praise Unit is not gospelmusic, and the norwegian artist that just put his voice one of our songs is not first of all known among gospelmusic lovers either. So his voice on our CD might not be your average cup of old school church music. This guy has a musical history which is similar to my own in taste, but the big difference is that he has a voice that simply blows your mind.

I was a little nervous to ask him about adding his voice to our CD, because the other guests on the CD are people that I already knew would share the Praise Unit vision and the concept of "the Mission Field". For this guy I simply trusted things I had heard about him. Of course I was also influenced by the ministry he has done with his family and his former band throughout the years and also that his big sister is a good friend and does a great job looking after my daughter at her school.

When I spoke to him a couple of weeks ago I was not nervous anymore but just happy that he wanted to be part of this. He came to Sweden and was groovy like a ton of Motown players, but still down to earth and honest about his love for Jesus.

the spanish guest

Over the past couple of years I have gotten some wonderful friends from Spain. As so many times before in my life I have realized how little I know about the world around me. There are so many great things to discover and experience in Spain, and most of all the people. Hopefully Praise Unit will visit Spain soon, and in June my church choir Joybells will make a spanish tour and visit some dear friends of mine. All this started in 2006 when I met this guy from Barcelona in the backstage area after Kirk Franklin's first visit to Amsterdam. His name is Sammy Planes and he was singled out in the audience to get up in stage and share his voice with the rest of us. In the year of 2009 Sammy is releasing a CD with his friends in "Hosanna otro lugar" and when he asked me to feature on one of the songs on that CD I was of course very happy. I also took the opportunity to ask him to sing one of the new Praise Unit songs. He accepted and I ended up spending a few days with Sammy and his brother Nathan who is not only producing the Hosanna CD, but also involved with lots of great things that are going on with Christian music in Spain right now. Nathan and Sammy received me as a brother and we had a few great days together. I did some things in english, spanish and swedish on the Hosanna song, and Sammy did some spanish vocals on the praise Unit song called "Can't get you out of my mind". When you hear this song on "the Mission Field" I hope you can hear that we had a lot of fun in the studio and that we like to encourage each other to praise the Lord no matter what language we are talking or singing. To begin with you can enjoy this little clip and the pics.

Hej! Ursäkta att jag skriver på svenska men det är ju mitt modersmål så tack för att du har överseende. Det var synnerligen en mycket innehållsrik helg i Stockholm. Här kommer lite bilder från olika marknivåer, bl a från Felicias fönster. Det var lite läskigt att gå ut på taket men det var det värt. Den italienska restaurangen som ni ser på bilden kan jag varmt rekommendera och min kock var grym. Maten tillagades efter beställning mitt framför ögonen på mig, jag skulle vilja kalla det för lyx! Må så gott!! Emilia

the photos

As you´ve already heard we had a great weekend together. I have just taken a brief look through the 800! photos we took this weekend and there are a lot of good ones and some not so good. I will give them to Mattias who will make the design of the CD cover and booklet and hopefully he finds something he likes and can use. Otherwise I don´t know what we`ll do.....

Here are some photos that we won´t use......






/Jakob

The busy man

Today Joakim came by my place on his way home to Örebro to pick up a suitcase...
Which he had left here before going to Spain...
Right after the photoshoot on Sunday...
That man is a busy man! He travels alot to connect with other both christians and non-believers, so please keep him and his family in your prayers!

Felicia

Pics from a Pu weekend 2

Forgot the pics....

Pics from a PU weekend

Hello!
It´s been a whole weekend with Praie Unit! On friday we had a party for Jossan (Josefin) who's getting married soon! It was a fun night with only girls and a lot of karaoke! Then the recordings on saturday and pics being taken for the CD today, man, it's hard living the rock-star-life, ha,ha =)
Had a lot of fun in the studio as always and Jocke having fun at our expence.... check out the video below and you see what he had us do. He's standing behind the camera giggling...
Bye for now!
Bless

Photoshoot

Today the whole Praise Unit crew (apart from two members currently visiting the USA and the Faroe Islands) got together for the photoshoot we've mentioned here before. We had alot of fun and without having seen the result yet, I think I can say that Jakob did a great job photographing the rest of us...! And hopefully the rest of us, who tried our best modeling, did a good job aswell! The temperature outside was pretty pleasant but due to some really cold winds we were all freezing really bad, wishing we had assistants who'd serve us hot beverages and wrap us in blankets from time to time!=)But we're all just happy it's springtime and we didn't have to shoot the photos outdoors during the Swedish winter...

After an intensive weekend I think we're all really tired...but happy!
Blessings,
Felicia

After a day in the sun.....or

After a long day in a sunny Stockholm it feels nice to soon have a good nights sleep. Today we spent most of the day in a studio in a dark basement far away from the sunny parks. But we had a great time anyway, we did som live tracks for some of the Mission Field songs. Some things weirder than other....maybee someone will post some video clips here.

Today Stockholm was filled with christian people doing a manifestation for Jesus Christ. About 15 000 people from different churches gathered for a service in the heart of Stockholm city. Awsome!

Now I need to sleep so I look good tomorrow.... when it´s picture time.(We will take the pictures for the CD cover and booklet.)

Good night and God bless!

/Jakob