Strummindude.com

The Sauna Tapes

The Sauna Tapes album cover

Alright, so I took on the challenge, made the effort and produced the album.

Challenge?

This is the challenge: record an album in 29 days, just because you can. That’s 10 songs or 35 minutes of original material recorded during the month of February. Put it on a CD and send it in, postmarked March 1st at the latest.

I almost didn’t make it, but after some encouragement from the community at rpmchallenge.com and one last desperate effort, including a 20-hour session programming drums and mixing, on thursday and friday, I actually had a freshly toasted copy of my 9-song, 35 min 46 sec epic in hand by March 1st.

“The Sauna Tapes”?

I decided pretty early on that having the recording sessions in my study wasn’t working. It’s located next to the bedrooms, and since the recording activities went on mostly at night, there was no hope putting in all the hours I’d need if I was doing it in there.

So I moved all my equipment over to our sauna. It’s pretty big for a sauna, and has actually been in use as a spare bedroom. And since that time, all of the recordings took place in there. Hence the name.

By mid-March or something (I have no idea, really), this album, and the albums of all of the hundreds of other artists who also completed the challenge, will be up in the Jukebox at the rpmchallenge.com website. I very much recommend a visit there. Browsing about and wallowing among the mutitude of various styles of music in there is an almost overwhelming experience.

Until that time, you can enjoy the album here. If you click on the title of each song, you will be taken to a page containing the lyrics, if any, of that song, and maybe some commentary notes to further enhance your listening pleasure. Enjoy yourself! (And please tell me if you did!)

Anyone wishing to save the songs on their hard drive for use in iPods or what have you, can download a zip archive containing all of the songs here. The size is around 70 MB, the quality is 256 Kbit/s.

The Songs:

There should be an integrated player beneath each of the song titles below. It uses Flash, so if you’re using some sort of advertisment blocking software, or if you don’t have Adobe Flash installed on your computer, it might not show up right, or at all.

1. Overture to the RPM Challenge
(Persson)