The five-piece band have commandeered the display window of a hotel situated on the corner of one of Stockholm's busiest streets, built a studio in it, and are spending the whole of July working on the album, in what they have aptly named A Glass Cage Of Emotions. Throughout the month passers-by can watch what's going on through the many windows and even listen to their sessions via headphones on the street.
"We've been working on the album for a little over a year, and figured that when it came to recording it, collaborating with the Scandic Malmen hotel to promote its music profile at the same time as our new album, would be much better than renting an expensive studio," says vocalist Henrik Ljungqvist. It's certainly getting them noticed.
The temporary studio is centred around British company Audient's ASP4816 desk, supplied by Sweden's largest music store, Deluxe Music. "It's brilliant. It's really cool to have such a professional desk in our studio," adds Henrik, indicating the Audient ASP4816. "We've never worked with this kind of stuff before," he admits. "Our sound engineer came in for a couple of days and gave us a few lessons on the mixing desk (it was new for him too), but when he's not here we've been learning new things about it every day.
"The cool thing is we're not only using it for recording," continues Henrik, explaining about their forthcoming gig showcasing some of their new tracks, including their latest single Us against the wall. "We already have a mixer that we use for gigging, but we realised that the Audient has way more channels than ours, so we decided to use it for the live mix as well as recording." Loaded with the key features of a large format recording console, the compact, cost-effective ASP4816 features Audient's legendary analogue circuitry, and fits neatly into the Join The Riot temporary studio set up.
In addition, the bandmates are planning a live streaming concert especially for Brazil, where they have a burgeoning fan base. "We'll set up some cameras in the studio," says Henrik, who's also been working on promoting everything and clearly energised by what they're doing. "The other day we had a spontaneous gig. There's a door in the corner of the 'studio' so we just opened it! We became street performers, but indoors - so we still had that great sound."
So the people of Stockholm are being treated to free entertainment, but it turns out they are contributing to the vibe of the album too. "We get to feel the pulse of the city here. We're usually sitting in a dark room making music, and this is totally different: it's light and you can hear sounds outside when people are passing, so you get inspiration that way as well." The new album is due out in September.
(Jim Evans)
