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.
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.
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.
From: https://www.psychedelicbabymag.com/2020/11/permanent-clear-light-interview.html
