Awesome review on babysue!

Hey guys! Our second album is a *top pick* for January 2013 reviews section on babysue! Read the review below and make sure that you visit the babysue sites afterwards to check out more cool stuff. Cheers and have a great 2013 everyone!
——————————————————————————————
                                                                                                                                                         The Bias - Break The Light (CD, Ruska, Rock)
Cool hard rock with balls…and a vocalist whose voice immediately reminded us of John Kay. The Bias is the trio comprised of Ville Vilpponen (guitars, vocals, keys),Jaakko Vilpponen (drums, percussion), and Mina Eliott (bass). Recorded at San Francisco’s Tiny Telephone recording studio, Break The Light is one big solid blast of pure rock energy. These folks have a sound that seems particularly influenced by classic hard rockers from the 1970s. The rhythms are thick and ballsy…the guitars fuzzy and funky…and the vocals have that great gravelly sound that made Steppenwolf such a success. The band formed in 2010 in the Bay Area but they have now relocated to Finland. This is easily one of the the best hard rock albums we’ve heard in months. Gripping loud cuts include “In Time,” “Nine Lives,” “Patience Please,” “Embers,” and “Little Girl.” Highly recommended…WE LOVE IT. Top pick.
                                                                                                                                                        Direct link to the review:  CLICK HERE
                                                                                                                                                      www.babysue.com
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Break The Light available on iTunes

Our new album is now on iTunes. Physical copies available through Ruska Records!

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Listen to Break The Light in full now!

Yes, our second album is finished. A tad more than ten months after the first one was released, seems pretty good to us- all things considering… The whole enchilada is available for your listening pleasure in the Music section. Physical release will be in a few weeks through Ruska Records and the album should be available on iTunes et al around the same time. Stay well and warm everybody!

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Mixing completed!

After some set-backs we have finalized the mixes for our second album. This calls for a “Yeah!”. We had everything ready to go already about three weeks ago, but collectively came to the conclusion that we were just not pleased enough with the overall sound of the record… Next step: bin all (but one) of the mixes and start over from scratch. These things happen- and can be frustrating to a man (and a woman).

Now we’re happy to inform you that the mastering is scheduled for next week. Our cat for the job is Jaakko Viitalahde from Virtalahde Mastering. We’re putting the artwork together and everything is going well. Can’t wait to unleash some more tracks soon for you guys to hear and get the CDs manufactured and out there in the real world. Good vibes here and we’re wishing well to each and everyone of you! Thanks for reading!

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Mixing underway!

As of today our second album is in the mixing stage! We’re working with Hannu Hattunen, who is a mixing engineer at SF Sound- studios in Eastern Finland. We’re getting in the groove, tweaking the sonics, sending files back and forth. The preliminary mixes are made and we’re taking a little break. The plan is to get back on it in time to have mixes finalized by the end of this month. The album will be called Break the Light and feature the following songs, most likely in this order:

  1. In Time
  2. Nine Lives
  3. Never Turn Me On
  4. Patience Please
  5. Dinosaur
  6. Better Friend
  7. Embers
  8. Little Girl
  9. The River

More details to come soon! Love to all…

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Another new song + studio news

No moi (finnish for “well hi there” or along those lines)! We uploaded a new song called Better Friend here and you should definitely go to the Music section and have a listen. As one of the more riff-based blasts of energy off of the upcoming album it will entice your ears with its dirty rock and roll guitars, stop and start rhythms and some nice little twists and turns so you don’t get too comfortable just sitting there. Mmm… thank you very much.

Same things as last time: a rough mix, will be mixed again for the album… blah-blah. We’re in the process of looking for a great local (or non-local) mixing engineer right now who would be a good match for us and give the mixes some extra input and help us pull the whole thing together. We have a couple of people in mind. When something’s definite we’ll let you know immediately.

So, we’ve been setting up our new rehearsal/recording studio for a couple of weeks now. There have been (and still are) some glitches along the way. Seems like we underestimated how long it’ll take to make all our recording gear work here in Finland with the 220/230V AC and overestimated the availability of the equipment needed. Since most of the stuff we brought over from the US is made to accept 110/120V only, we’ve had to purchase numerous step-down converters, new power supplies etc. Most everything is up and running but we’re still waiting, for example, for a new power supply for Ville’s favorite pre-amp for vocals. Should arrive this week. In either case, we are set to go to friend’s studio and do some keyboard overdubs in a few days. Sweet!

Keep checking back guys, stuff is happening. Oh, and also happy 4th of July to all of our American friends should we not be in touch before then.

Take good care!

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

New country, new studio, new song

Massive apologies for not updating for so long! We have been busy moving from The Bay Area to Helsinki, Finland and that’s been pretty hectic. Luckily we have already found a new rehearsal studio and though there’s still some vocals and odd bits to do the second album is approximately 93.3% recorded. When things settle into the groove again, we should have it ready later this summer or early fall. Not too bad.

We want to thank Jacob Winik for doing a great job at Tiny Telephone… especially the drums sound wonderful this time around. Also a shout-out to TT owner John Vanderslice from whom Ville purchased a British Reissue VOX AC-15 for a meager sum of $100. The amp sounds so good we ended up re-recording some parts that were already in the can just to feature it. Best. Deal. Ever.

There’s finally new music on the site as well. It’s a rough mix that Ville did for the song called Dinosaur. We naturally think it’s awesome: driving, a tongue in cheek ball of fun rock and roll song about being old, bloated and out of touch. Or what we think being old, bloated and out of touch is like… We ourselves are young, hungry and with-it or course. You’ll find the song under the Music tab.

We’ll be here more often now- a promise. Hope everyone’s having a good start of the summer. Lotsa love.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Studio Update April 2012

So we are well underway with our second album. We spent three days recently in Tiny Telephone studios working on a dozen tracks with Jacob Winik engineering. Some songs are more complete than others- we’ll get to the final overdubs and vocals later this month at Ville’s place and the legendary Occidental Studios and continue through May as necessary. We want to have nine songs ready and mixed this summer. We are also in the middle of moving our operations to Finland for the time being so it’s a pretty hectic time. There are just a few photos from the sessions added to Visuals.

Don’t forget: if you’re in The Bay Area this Saturday, we’re playing a special “Going Away” show in The Catacombs studio complex. Our friends Sean and Steve will also do a set. Come to hear our new songs and enjoy the friendly informal atmosphere! Check out our Facebook page for more information.

Stay tuned!

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

February 27, 2012

It’s been a bit quiet here recently, not that it means we’ve been lazing around! New music is coming together really well right now and we’re preparing to start recording in three week’s time in San Francisco’s Tiny Telephone studios. Songs range from driving rock numbers to more groove-based pieces and everything in between. It’s all pretty hard hitting and direct-sounding stuff so far, not really anything overtly “psychedelic”. We’re planning on maybe featuring some acoustic guitar for the first time as well as some keyboard touches (“Rebels” has a number of tracks where we used a guitar synthesizer, and while it provided a cool extra element for the shows it was a real bitch to record…)

Also, we’ve been away from the stage for a while now and will do an one-off San Francisco appearance on the 14th of April. This will be a very special show for us for multiple reasons (more of which later) and we promise to debut a good chunk of the upcoming second album. Hope to see a lot of you there… check back for details… best wishes to everyone.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

New promo pics

There’s a few new shots (Thanks Ben) of us in the Visuals-section. We’re set to start recording our second album in March… more details to follow soon. Cheers!

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment