"Hi folks,

Hannu asked me to write a few words about this cdr, so here we go.. During the 10+ years that I've been playing music, I've always liked cover songs. My first serious band played a lot of covers from 1980s and early 1990s Finnish alternative rock bands and such. After that I've drifted into more experimental waters, but the thought of making more covers has always been in my mind. When Hannu told he'd like to release a Clay Figure cd-r on 267 Lattajjaa, I figured out that the time had come.

The first track, Back In The Village, was originally made by Iron Maiden. It's a little less known track from their 1984 masterpiece lp Powerslave. I figured out the song's basic chord structure and thought it would translate well into a folk song. I changed the chorus a bit to make it more singable (is that a real word?), and replaced the solo/bridge section with a bunch of samples from The Prisoner tv serial. The song is based on that serial (Maiden also have an earlier song based on the same theme titled The Prisoner) and as I'm also a Prisoner fan, it was an obvious solution. The song (and the serial) is, to put it briefly, about a non-comformist individual repressed by the society around him. 1984, Brave New World, We...

The second track, Divine Death, is a classic one from Napalm Death's first lp Scum. In the end of that song there's the repeated scream "divine death". I sampled and looped that scream, and recorded it through a couple of effect pedals, added some more sounds to make it a fuller whole and finally spoke the lyrics on top of that. The part "individuality disabled, blinded by fables" fits well into the theme introduced in the first track.

The final track, Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun, originally appears on Pink Floyd's second lp A Saucerful Of Secrets, as well as on the live section of their Ummagumma double lp. I've been wanting to make a cover of this song ever since I started to play music, so it was about time. I recorded a drum loop and played variations of the basic riff of the song on top of that with a keyboard. Then I layered a whole lot of different things there and manipulated the track on a computer for a rather interesting result, I think. Originally this song is, I think, just a psychedelic space rock song, but I tried to turn it into a description of an Icarus character who is finally blinded by a divine (or whatever) light because he refuses to accept his lousy situation and aims higher. "Individuality disabled, blinded by fables" again..."

-Pekka PT/Clay Figure