December Pill

Since it's Christmas and since i did not yet post any music in my blog, i guess this is the time to share something we've done with Mitya recently. This is the track we recorded not so long ago for a compilation that will be out on Full of Nothing some time soon hopefully. I think we were inspired by Christmas melodies coming from all over, when we were making this track, and that is why i would like to give it to everyone who reads my blog as a Christmas present :)

Merry Christmas and have a very nice holidays!
We are off to Murmansk on Sunday! I'll bring some nice photos of northern sceneries :)

Installation for a poetry evening

Last Friday we took part in a poetry evening by exhibiting an installation. We did the installation together with a group of photographers called PMAM as well as a group of poets. We did the music for the installation as Banana Pill and i also took part in video editing.

I made a video preview of the loop for you to check out:

We made two videos like this and originally they were supposed to be projected on two sides of a white cube-shaped box with a sound coming from inside the box (two loop-stations connected to a small combo were placed inside the box). The box was placed in a dark room, next to the room where poets were reading their poems to visitors. Unfortunately, we had problems with projectors, so we had to keep only one video on one side of the box. It looked good anyway, but i didn't manage to take a good video of the whole installation.

Hopefully we get to do more things with those people. I really like when artists from different genres work together and i enjoy the results.

DIY Xmas garland

Sorry i haven't been blogging for a long time. Most of this time i spent on our new release i wrote about in my last post as well as preparing some nice stuff for tonight's poetry evening which i'm gonna write about in my next post. I also had to find Xmas presents and other stuff for my relatives in Murmansk (we're going there for the Xmas holiday!!). In between those things i had time to decorate my apartment a little and make two nice Xmas garlands:

For these garlands i needed:

- strong white thread

- different wooden and/or shiny beads

- craft paper with nice patterns

- fabric with a nice pattern

- shapes for gingerbreads

- carton

- scissors

- liquid paper glue

- glitter

- all kinds of shiny stuff that can be added (golden stars, little bells etc)

I used gingerbread shapes to cut out animals, flowers, bells and angels out of carton, fabric and craft paper. Fabric shapes were glued on both sides of each carton shape. All the shapes were hung on the main thread with the help of the beads and normal white or red sewing thread. For the beads to stay in one place on the main thread, i've brought the thread twice through each bead. All the other glitter and shiny stuff was hanged in random order between the shapes.

This is the only Xmas decoration Notka cannot reach and ruin. She eats my Xmas tree and plays with the lights :)

New Jozik release

I've finally finished the design for the new release on Jozik records. It was our first try on releasing something we don't participate ourselves in. The release is a split cassette with a Russian artist Earth Incubator on one side and a Norwegian duo Bjerga/Iversen on the other.

This was the first time we tried that kind of cassette stickers. They look good, but next time i would rather use them on the colored cassettes. As for those transparent cassettes, i should try spray-painting them next time.

I drew the pattern for the stickers with black pen and markers and scanned it.

The boxes are made from textured carton i got from a stationary shop. I've just cut out some cassette-wide straps from it, folded them in right places and glued the edges together. The most fun part was (and still is) painting them with watercolor. I just love the process of making those crazy patterns with lots of water and many colors mixing into one another. I also love how each box is unique even though they all have the same design.

We'll post the info about the release on the Jozik site in a few days when we have some more copies ready and they will be available for order.

Squirrel

A squirrel came over to our window to say hi to Notka.

And the weather changed a lot since my last post. I am so happy about the snow, and so is Notka. She almost doesn't leave the window, watching the snow falling all the time.

DIY camera filters

I've been doing quite a lot of photographing recently. Having a big desire of experimenting i took transparencies, scissors and all kinds of markers i could find and went crazy. I ended up with lots of handmade camera filters.

Today morning i went out to try how they work. I tried them on my digital camera this time, so that i know how the result looks before i try it on film.

Here is the original shot:

And the results:

For the red and blue filters i used permanent markers, and they surely look darker and smoother. The pink one is the highlighter. All the others are made just with regular Stabilo markers, they left lots of bubbles, and the color on the images was not so smooth. But they all are fun to play with. Gonna be using them with film from now on! 

Lights

I've been quite lazy recently and haven't really made anything to show and write about. There is a new tape cover design waiting to be finished, but since the blank tapes are still on their way, i wasn't really in a hurry to complete the design. I also got lots of woolen thread from some sweaters i bought on sale in a second hand shop, so i have a knitting project coming up.

But for now, check out some old photos from a film i accidentally found somewhere in my house couple of days ago and got back from a photo lab only today. I have no idea how i forgot about this film (it's two years old!)

    

Looks like i've been really into lights those days.

There was also the only intentional "series of photos" i've ever done. If you can call two photos a series :)

Actually, nowadays i've been thinking on some kind of new way of sharing photos on this blog. I find the "Here are the best photos from my last roll" kind of blogging quite boring, at least when i do it myself. So i'm trying to come up with some kind of a photo diary or something. Got one idea from someone, but that will require lots of photographing, which is fun but expensive. So i will be grateful for more ideas or examples.

New film cameras

Last month, before we went on tour, I got an old Soviet VILIA film camera from my relatives.

I shot one roll when we came back, and did not get any super great photos, but i still like the colors and can't wait to shoot more.

This was not the only camera i got last month. Actually, the other one is something even more special:

I've never shot medium format before and i can't wait to try. I am not even sure i know how to use this camera, but today i'm getting the film and i'll try what comes out of this. Unfortunately, it's getting darker and darker every day and winter's coming. Hopefully, we'll still get a couple of sunny days.

I missed shooting film lately, because my Nikon has been broken for a while. Now i can shoot again and if anyone has any advice on what can be done with the cameras i got, i would love to hear. I think Notka has some ideas already :)

Notebooks

One day, among the other advices on how to save paper, i've read that old receipts can be good for writing all kinds of lists on them. After that i've been saving all the receipts i get and writing all my grocery shopping lists on them. But since i don't do that many lists, the old receipts started to pile up. Then i got an idea of making small notebooks out of them. Here's what i got:

The Moomin pics were cut out from my Moomin calendar.

Those are not the only kind of notebooks i've been making recently. I get loads of printed handouts in my uni and most of them are printed on one side. So i made some A5 notebooks and now the other side of each paper can be used as well.

I am planning to give these as presents to some nice people.

Back from the tour

The tour was great! We met so many nice people, played with good musicians, got invitations to some splits and compilations and saw beautiful towns and cities we wouldn't have seen otherwise.

I've found travelling by bus much more fun because you get to see lots of tiny villages on the way from one city to another:

Staying over at different people's apartments lets you meet lots of new people as well as some cute pets:

And of course the best thing is to play shows.

And see other great artists play.

Big thanks to Arma from Lithuania, Madame Claude club in Berlin and Tim from Hamburg for organizing shows and being such a nice people! <3

Banana Pill Euro tour!!

Lately i've been spending all the late evenings making CD and tape covers, because very soon Jozik records distro is going on tour!

I had to put together more of kakaokamkami "Snowballs" CD-Rs, finish sewing envelopes for the 4-way split and most importantly make the whole new design for the new Banana Pill CD-R.

We finished recording our material for the new CD-R on saturday. And last night, finally, Mitya has finished mastering the tracks and i finished the cover design. Now all i need to do is to cut out the rest of the inserts and to attach the CD-stickers.

I bought the pink envelopes for the CDs from the local craft shop Askarelli. The painting for the front cover is done by me, except that as a sample of a bird i used some image i found on the internet. The back cover text was made using letter stamps i bought from the other craft shop Tiimari. I tried to design it so that i can make the covers and CDs fast, cause we have to have these on our tour.

On friday we are leaving for our tour as Banana Pill. We'll perform in Estonia, Lithuania and Germany. 7 concerts altogether, including the start-of-the-tour performance in Myymälä2 gallery in Helsinki on thursday. I hope we will not be totally broke when we come back.

Mitya

<3

Paper bowl

I've been so frustrated with throwing away so much paper recently. I have membership cards for couple of shops and with those cards i get a bunch of magazines every month. Most of them i go through only once and then they go to paper recycle box. Some of them i don't even open.

One day i thought i should try making something out of them, so that they work at least to some purpose. Especially that i like crafting.

So i started of making a paper bowl:

I only needed a glue-gun and one Stockmann magazine to create a bowl like this. But it was still lacking something, so i got out my paints and made it much more colorful:

I enjoyed making it a lot and from that moment on i am not throwing away a single magazine or newspaper. I am working on more bowls like this but i'd also like to try making something else. I have couple of ways to make paper baskets in mind, but i would appreciate any other ideas coming in!

Katya

I was looking through my 2-years-old film photographs and found this one, which i totally forgot about.

She is my best friend of all and i miss her so much. We live too far from each other and it's sad we don't get to communicate as much as we used to :(

And i just love this picture!

4-way split on Jozik records

We've finally put out a 4-way split cassette on Jozik records. The artists on the split are Architeuthis Rex from Italy, Hobo Cubes from Canada, Mpala Garoo from Russia and our project Banana Pill. We've been waiting for this release for a long time. We even had to change one of the artists on the cassette. Originally there was supposed to be Summer Recreation Camp from Spain, but unfortunately he did not have time to record his material and we got Hobo Cubes on the split instead. I hope we manage to release something by Summer Recreation Camp some other time in the near future.

I've spent quite a lot of time creating the covers (i still have not finished them all), but i like them.

For the fabric envelopes i've bought a huge skirt from a second hand shop. We ordered orange tapes via e-bay from a very nice guy rainbowtapes. Even though shipping was a bit too expensive, the cassettes look good and the quality is good as well.

I did not want to make any stickers with artists' names for the cassettes, because the cassettes look good on their own. So i used a hole-puncher to make blue and green sticker dots to indicate the sides of the tape.

The tape can be ordered from Jozik records.

Notka modeling

Notka was posing for me the other day. We got some nice shots.

 

 

 

I didn't know she's so good in modeling :)