Exclusive album premiere of ‘Return to the Core’ by Albinö Rhino, out March 3rd, 2023 via Space Rock Productions.

This fantastic Helsinki trio are back with a brand new album. So far the band has released two albums and various EP’s over the years. ‘Return to the Core’ is a fantastic follow-up showcasing their improvisational abilities as a band. The album was recorded live in one day with some additional overdubs recorded later at Helsinki Music Studio, where the album was also mixed. The opus was mastered at Virtalähde Mastering. Dr Space, Olli Laamanen and Mikko Heikinpoika added their magic when the core was built. The album moves from acoustic spacey music to heavy desert rock and doom with ease and grace and has an amazing flow to create one hell of a good psychedelic ride.

“This album was born from a long jam”

How much work went into your upcoming album, ‘Return to the Core’?

Shortly put: A lot. Years… Not by choice but more to do with the circumstances. Also the COVID restrictions were pretty immersive in Finland in the music and event field and made the years from 2020 to 2022 a weird time vortex where time stood still. We recorded the frame of the album just before our previous album was released. The recording itself took only a day as we recorded live in a studio setting with headphones and the guitar and bass cabinets isolated to separate rooms. What took time had to do with the fact that we decided to produce the album self-sufficient and that always takes time as there’s no deadline.

The album turned out to be a difficult one to mix as it’s just one song of 35 minutes and it’s very dynamic going from Floydish prog rock to even ‘Nola’ style heaviness. Even the mastering was a long process due to the mixing difficulties and we returned to the mastering studio just before the album was sent to the pressing plant. The album cover design was another project which took almost a year to get together with the layout artists. The album art was designed by Viljami. Oh, and don’t get us started about the pressing plant queues at the moment. We are really grateful to Scott and Sabine at Space Rock Productions for releasing the record, respecting our vision of the album and being so patient with all of the things in the process.

Would you like to talk about your instruments, gear, effects and pedals? What are we hearing on the record?

The album starts with a drone from an Indian electronic Tanpura, which carries out throughout the record. It is followed by a self recorded sample of a streak. In comes the 12 string acoustic guitar riff followed by a 1980’s 100w Fender Dual Showman and a Finnish designed 100w 1970’s Monster amplifiers on the guitar.

The clean sounds and most of the overdriven guitars are from Fender. We prefer to get the distortion out of the amp/tubes without pedals. There is one setting on that amp that you can get the sound between a Marshall and a Fender amp that hits the spot. All other settings won’t work in our Sabbathian tone search. The Monster amp is used on the heaviest parts with a Black Arts Toneworks Pharaoh pedal. Other than that there’s a Boss delay, Cry Baby Wah Wah, Electro Harmonix Nano Small Stone Phaser and Holy Grail reverb used on the guitar. All of them through a modified 1970’s Monster cabinet with 2x 15″ drivers.

The bass is overdriven with the tubes of a Monster La Mesera head into a 4x 10″ cabinet in the recording session. All of the bass and drums you hear on the album were recorded in the one day studio session. Only vocals, efx synths and some of the guitars have been overdubbed. We are tuned to drop B on this album as usual with Albinö Rhino. So simple things. Some of the drone synths you hear in the background are from a Moog Sub Phatty synth. The more psychedelic synths were recorded by Scott Heller with modular synths and the birdlike sounds were recorded by Olli Laamanen with the Roland System 100 synthesizer. In the outro you can hear Mikko Heikinpoika delivering overtone vocals and a field recording by Scott in the background that he made at his home while there was a storm outside.

Where was the album recorded and who produced it?

The album core was recorded live at Suomenlinnan Studio, Helsinki by Ilari Larjosto. Additional overdubs recorded by Kimmo at Audiospot Studios, Helsinki. The album was mixed by Kimmo at Helsinki Music Studio. Scott recorded the modulars at his studio in Copenhagen at the time, and we recorded the synth with Olli in their studio / rehearsal place Das Båt, Helsinki. It was mastered by Jaakko Viitalähde at Virtalähde Mastering, who mastered our previous album ‘Upholder’ also.

Is there a certain idea or concept you were trying to make with the album?

Soundwise the idea was to get it sound as it plays live by a power trio. There were endless possibilities that could have been overdubbed over it, but the decision was made in production to have it as honest as possible. But still we wanted to make it sound like a proper studio album and not a lo-fi live recording. So we overdubbed the vocals and some of the guitars and asked friends to play the synthesizer efx so that the album carries through.

Concept wise we don’t want to open it too much as everybody can interpret the lyrics as they see fit. Although we have to mention that the lyrics were already done when we entered the studio. There’s some weird foreshadowing going on there..

This was more about making one long album length prog song with heavy parts included, as it formed so effortlessly in our rehearsal place. Also about trying to achieve something that hasn’t been done before on this timeline for people to enjoy..

“Paying respects to Pink Floyd”

The band has been active for several years now releasing two albums and several EP’s. How would you compare your upcoming album with the previous two?

This album was born by just jamming this long jam in our practice room between the normal heavier Rhino songs that we practiced for gigs or our future releases. It was something we went back to for years and at some point when Kimmo read Viljami Puustinen’s book Kingston Wall – Petri Walli’s Saga, he was inspired by the fact that their idea of recording the jams was to avoid listening to them, to have the freedom of improvisation on the gigs also afterwards. The book is of course a sad and touching story because of what happened to Petri. And Puustinen dug deep while interviewing people that were around the band at the time, so it was also an inspiring one. At some point the main melody arose in our practice room over the chord structure and it hit the spot on the song and kinda made it all together. It didn’t take long as the studio was booked and we entered the studio session with just a frame of the song.

One could say that if our previous release ‘Riff Religion’ was homage to Black Sabbath then this is undeniably for paying respects to Pink Floyd. Isn’t it just amazing when a rock band or an artist makes an album, and that album gives birth to a completely new subgenre of music with thousands of bands following in that legacy?

Speaking of which, tell us some background info about the EP’s and the previous albums… would love to know more about them.

Our first demo/album/EP however you want to call it ‘Return of the Goddess’ was a magical thing to practice and record. Spending full days at the practice room which was in an old mansion at the time. It’s our most produced record yet, although it sounds like a demo, we put a lot of work and small details on it.

Our first self-titled LP was a more simple approach. We picked the songs we could play best at the time of our catalog of songs, and aimed to enter the studio so that the recordings didn’t need editing before mixing. It came out to be a pretty simplistic manifestation of proto doom accompanied by a 15 minute long upbeat jam based riffer ‘Uphold the Light part 1’ closing the album.

Our next 3 releases ‘Upholder’, ‘Riff Religion’ and ‘Human Caravan’ were all recorded in the same session with the since sadly passed engineer Toni Heinonen.

‘Upholder’ is an album which includes ‘Uphold the Light Part 2’ & ‘3’. We got to play parts 1, 2 & 3 live, as it was meant to be a one hour continuous song, one time in Helsinki, a year after the release of Upholder. The song ‘Riff Religion’ was released as a single sided 12″ vinyl clocking also 15 minutes. The song ‘Human Caravan’ was released as a split vinyl with Morbid Elvis through Svart Records and we performed the EP live on stage with two bands on the stage at the same time on the 2nd edition of Blow Up Festival in Helsinki back in 2016.

Do you often play live? Who are some of your personal favorite bands that you’ve had a chance to play with over the past few years?

At the moment we don’t play live. Let’s see what the future brings. Our bass player VH, who was also the co-lead vocalist, decided to leave the band back in 2018 and this was of course a very sad thing for us and we are still kinda vibing out and taking it easy with the future. We’d still have 2 albums yet to record and hopefully we will see that happen. Thankfully we got to play ‘Return to the Core’ one time completely in Helsinki for a sold out Uleåborg Festival of Psychedelia preclub with the original line up. You might find a short clip of that from Youtube..

We’ve had the privilege to open the stage in Finland for Acid King, Monolord, Conan & Jucifer through Blow Up That Gramophone agency. Playing before Hidria Spacefolk was also a circle coming complete and we just loved to play with our friends in Green King, United Seafood, Jupiter, From Grotto, Baltimor, Tombstoned, Semtex, Woodrue, Radien, Morbid Elvis, Caskets Open, Kaleidobolt, Deep Space Destructors, Kremlin, Spiralism, Getsemane, Warp Transmission, Laserdrift, Tuliterä and many others.

Are any of you involved in any other bands or do you have any active side-projects going on at this point?

Viljami plays guitar and sings in a punk rock group called Huono Ryhti. Kimmo has been busy with his dub project Dreadlock Tales which operates as a studio, live dub show, sound system with custom built speakers and a label.

How important is improvisation for you?

It’s very important. As this album and the A-side of our last album ‘Upholder’ was born from jamming and improvising. ’Uphold the Light Part 2’ was formed almost completely improvised during practices and live gigs and it was already pretty long during the release of the first self-titled album which holds ’Part 1’. It’s wild to see a song grow in length every time when playing it, taking fire from each other in the rehearsal place and then from the audience during gigs. Goosebumps also when a riff or a melody arises from nothingness in the middle of a jam. And a weird feeling to leave the rehearsal place at night to the streets with a newly found melody as an earworm.

What are some future plans?

The plan is to take it easy and continue practicing the 2 albums that are yet to be recorded. We have a lot going on in our personal lives, so we are waiting for some peaceful times.

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?

This is a difficult one. Some of Viljamis’s favourite albums would include for example Comets On Fire’s ‘Avatar,’ The Dwarves’s ‘The Dwarves Are Young Good Looking,’ Kaleidobolt’s ‘Bitter’ and Neil Young material.

Some of Kimmo’s favourite albums are Black Sabbath’s ‘Black Sabbath,’ Sepultura’s ‘Chaos A.D.,’ The Disciples’ ‘For Those Who Understand,’ Pink Floyd’s ‘The Wall’ and Alice in Chains’ ‘Dirt’. The last two were introduced to him already in the early days of his youth by his late big brother who passed away in 2008. The Floyd record was way too early before entering 1st class in school even.

We’d like to recommend the new album by Green King and the latest albums of all those we shared the stage and toured with in the past who were mentioned earlier. And of course do check the upcoming album from Øresund Space Collective and their massive catalog!

Thank you. Last word is yours.

Thanks so much It’s Psychedelic Baby! Magazine for the great questions and for premiering our record in public before the release! It means alot to us. Warmed our hearts already back in 2017 when you chose ’Upholder’ as Vinyl Of The Day. Cheers!

Klemen Breznikar

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