Permanent Clear Light interview
Permanent Clear Light is a great psychedelic rock band from Finland. They released their debut album, ‘Beyond These Things’ in 2014. After that, the group has released several singles, EPs and appeared on a number of compilation albums on the British Fruits de Mer label. After a creative break, Permanent Clear Light released its second album, ‘Cosmic Comics’ (Sulatron Records), which shows that the band has travelled a long way through the spheres since their debut.
What’s the concept behind Permanent Clear Light and when did you form this group?
Matti Laitinen: The basic idea is to make our own music the way we want to make it without anybody saying what we should do. We’re all fans of the 60s psychedelia so that is the obvious influence as well as early 70s Finnish prog rock. On the other hand, all of us have always been open to all kinds of good music from pop to jazz. We started working together in 2008, though we had known each other for a long time and even been in some bands together.
Would you like to talk a bit about your background?
I’ve been in a couple of rock bands before. Markku has played in a folk rock jazz band and Arto has played everything from rockabilly to jazz. In our civil lives I’ve worked as a teacher, Markku works at a university and Arto in informatics.
“We like to create sceneries, pictures, fragments of a movie.”
What’s the concept behind Permanent Clear Light? How would you describe your sound?
Our sound is based a lot on keyboards like the mellotron, synths etc. On the other hand, there are a lot of guitars there, too, but not in the form of long solos. We like to create sceneries, pictures, fragments of a movie. The long instrumental sequences are an essential part of our music. The songs usually have lots of layers with everything carefully planned to make an entity. We like to think that we sound like nobody else.
How do you usually approach music making? How important is improvisation for you?
We usually work independently first. Meaning that everyone develops his ideas on his own, we send our ideas to the others, they add something or suggest changes. After that we get together, typically for a week at some isolated place, jam, put everything together and record. After this all the material goes to Arto, who mixes it and adds some stuff and sends it back to us. This finally develops into the final product. We try to avoid doing for example the vocals over again and again. If there are mistakes or irritating details, so be it.
Can you share some further details how your latest album ‘Cosmic Comics’ was recorded?
Most of it was recorded at Markku’s “forest studio”. Basically a log cabin by a lake in the middle of nowhere. Some tracks we made at my summer house. ‘Cosmic Comics’ was actually ready for a long time. When we finally got in contact with Dave at Sulatron records, he suggested some minor changes and we made them and then the album was out really quickly. Some of the material has actually been released by Fruits de Mer records as singles, split singles etc. By the way, a big thanks goes to Eroc for the excellent mastering.
Where did you record it? What kind of equipment did you use and who was the producer? How many hours did you spend in the studio?
As mentioned above, most of it was recorded in the two country studios. Everything is produced by our multi-instrumentalist Arto, who happens to be very good with the recording as well. Nowadays everything is recorded on a computer. It makes the process a lot easier than dealing with tapes. For the equipment we use a normal drum set, different kinds of keyboards and suitable guitars and amps from our, or mostly Markku’s, immense guitar collection. For a band with such a keyboardish sound, we have lots of guitars available. Probably more than any other band around. When we are recording, we work from dawn to dusk for several days in a row. We have found this way of working very productive. New ideas keep popping out all the time during these sessions. The sessions also involve a lot of discussing all kinds of things, drinking, going to sauna, swimming in the lake etc.
Are any of you involved in any other bands or do you have any active side-projects going on at this point?
Arto plays some jazz in his free time and he and I also have a side-band that plays more straightforward rock. Markku has recorded some tracks for his international friends. He has also been working on some avantgarde-stuff.
How would you compare it to ‘Beyond These Things’ from seven years ago? At that time you also recorded a couple of singles.
We did some singles for Fruits de Mer. I think ‘Beyond These Things’ is our favorite baby. I still like to listen to it sometimes. It has some titles like ‘Higher Than The Sun’ that are really good. Still, my favorite PCL track ’25 German Boy Scouts’ isn’t on our albums. It was released by Fruits de Mer as a single. To compare the two albums is really hard. I think that we can still do a lot better than we did on these two and we have already started working on our third album.
Were you inspired by psychoactive substances like LSD at the time of writing the album?
If we used them? No. But obviously they have influenced this kind of music a lot. Markku has been propagating the use of some substances for medical purposes, but I personally am not interested in taking any kinds of drugs.
How are you coping with the current world situation?
I am staying in Madrid, Spain at the moment. The other guys are in Finland. These are like two different worlds. In Madrid you hardly dare to go out with all the restrictions around. In Finland, where I spent the summer, everything was totally different. People living relatively normally. When it comes to politics, we noticed that for the third album we already have some really angry texts. I personally am worried about the rise of nationalism in Europe. I wish people would study the history a bit more and learn from it.
What are some future plans?
I’m moving back to Finland in the spring. I’m already staying there for a month in October-November for an operation. We will keep on putting the third album together, hopefully with a longer recording session next summer to get it out before Christmas 2021.
Let’s end this interview with some of your favourite albums. Have you found something new lately you would like to recommend to our readers?
My favorite albums are CSNY’s ‘Deja Vu’, Argent’s first album, King Crimson’s ‘In the Court of the Crimson King’, Love’s ‘Forever Changes’, Wigwam’s ‘Fairyport’, everything by the Move and some by MC5. All of it old stuff. I don’t listen to new bands a lot, but I like for example Dungen (or is that an old band already).
Thank you. Last word is yours.
I’m really happy that people all over the world have found our music. And thanks to your magazine for taking an interest in it.
Klemen Breznikar
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