News

I ended up getting signed after all, at the very last minute! It’s a new label called White Knight Records, and they’re connected to some of my favorite prog rock bands, like Hoggwash, Frost* and Magenta, so they have lots of experience in this genre.
They will help me promote and distribute the physical CDs to stores in the main prog rock countries: UK, USA, Japan, The Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, Argentina, France and Italy.
(I will personally take care of all the digital downloads though, so it’s a great deal for me.)

The “problem” with all this is that they need more time to get everything done, building hype, preparing promos etc etc, so the official release date will be changed until September. The unofficial release is still August 13 though, so I will sell my signed copies from that point. In other words, the most hardcore fans will get the CD a whole month before the rest of the world. :) No piracy please.

Today, I’ve mostly been drawing and signing photos. I won’t be sending them out for another two weeks, but I figure it’s good to get as much work done as soon as possible!

I also realized that I’m getting close to 100 pre-orders already, and I had only bought 100 envelopes! Not sure what I was thinking there.
So, I suddenly became stressed and worried, because what if I wouldn’t get more envelopes in time?!
I quickly ordered 100 more at an auction site similar to Ebay, and hoped they would send them in time. A couple of minutes later, a guy called, said he also lived in Gävle, and asked where he could drop off the envelopes I had bought. An hour later, I had them in my apartment.

Impending crisis swiftly averted!

Today, I’ve been practicing for the Lonely Starlight music video, and at the same time I’ve been trying to decide what to include in my Secret Surprise bonus, for those who chose that option when pre-ordering my album!

So I’ve been listening through lots and lots of old recordings (yes, among other things, the secret surprise is a disc filled with photos, animations, recordings etc), and this Kirby arrangement was a surprise for me, because I didn’t remember how good it was, haha:

FreddeGredde – Kirby

But now I remember that my plan was to make an animation, in which the Super Smash Bros characters were fighting as usual, on the Kirby stage, and then JigglyPuff suddenly fell off, and DIED! Everyone stopped the fighting and realized what had happened, and Kirby got saddest of them all, because he was secretly in love with JigglyPuff.
I got tired of the project after finishing the song though.

I had not really planned it, but now there’s a forum on my website! So I hope you’ll all make yourself comfortable there, write a note about yourself, start topics if you want me to explain or tell you about something, or whatever you have on your mind. :)

Oh, and this was probably at the very beginning of my singing career, a video clip from when I was 2-3 years old:

Leading up to the release of my debut album, Thirteen Eight, I decided to have a little contest. The winner will get a free copy of my CD sent to his/her home in time for August 13!

So what is the contest about then? Well, you can create anything related to me (FreddeGredde), like a drawing, a cover of any of my songs (or an original song maybe?), a YouTube video, a poem, or whatever you feel like!

Send your contribution through the contact form, or give it to me personally in the FreddeGredde chat room. The deadline to send things in is August 6.

Good luck!

Oh, and I made a FreddeGredde with mustache:

Madonna, Bono, Elton John etc don’t write their real names when signing stuff, do they? They write their artist names! So, I’ve been practicing on writing “FreddeGredde” instead of Fredrik Larsson now, so that I’m prepared to sign millions of things in the future!

What do you think, does it look okay, or would you be disappointed to have your CD signed with this?

Today, I decided to just relax and do nothing, because the album is recorded, and the music videos don’t need to be up until the end of the month. So all I can do is wait for the sound engineer to finish mixing!

So I went to the park to spend some time in the sun, because it was a really nice day! I brought my new pencils too, and tried them out a bit. There are lots of drawings to make for the people who pre-ordered the album, but I was just daubing a little this time, just making random lines and then tried to make characters of them.
Not sure if anyone would want it sent with his/her album, but tell me if you do, and you’ll get THE VERY FIRST drawing I did this year! Seems like something of a collector’s item, no?

Here’s a blurry photo of approximately 30% of the paper I drew on:

Today, my brother was here, and we filmed the Solace Distant video! He’s the director, so I’ve no idea how it will turn out, and I’ve just been following his directions all day. I think it will turn out great though!

Here’s a random picture from the filmed material:

Last week, the last bunch of recordings were sent to the studio and sound engineer that I’m working with, so now I’m officially done with that! I’m hoping that the mixing and mastering will be finished this week, but we’ll see. It’s also important that I’m happy with the results, so it’s hard to say if it’s worth risking that people from the other side of the world won’t get the physical copy in time for 13th of August.

Anyway, now starts the work with the three music videos that I plan to upload at the same time, by the end of the month! I’m not doing them all entirely by myself though. We have:

1. A “traditional FreddeGredde split-screen” for Lonely Starlight, which will be sort of like Beside Me I guess. I’m doing this one on my own, like I’ve always done with my videos. (Except for Vampire Bride.)

2. A slightly more typical music video directed by my brother, which is for the piano driven song Solace Distant. This one will be a bit more artsy, with different angles and shots and possibly black and white.

3. An animated video for The Star Song, which is a really cute song about a girl who finds a star! A guy named Oscar Baldwin is making the video, and it’s looking great so far! Here’s a little example, although it looks much better in motion!

Oh, and I’ve had so many pre-orders with requests for drawings and secret surprises now, so for future pre-orders, I can only give you a signed album and a signed photo with it. Thanks a lot! :)

Sorry that I haven’t been updating in a few days! I’m surprised that I managed to do it daily for more than a month, but once I forgot one day, I just never got back to it.

Anyway, so it’s been super busy the last few days, like always! Trying to get the drum parts done this week (won’t happen), and I’ve been trying to finish my own parts this week (won’t happen either), and I’ve also had some people over because of the Getaway Rock Festival, which is in Gävle this week. At least, I got them to help me with taking some pictures that could be included in the album booklet! None turned out that great though..
So anyway, I’ll keep working hard to make sure everything is ready to be mixed by next week. It will be tight to get it in time for the release date, but it should be doable!
Oh, and about the pre-orders: I’ve had 35 pre-orders so far, which is great, considering how far it is until the release! I really appreciate it. :) I won’t have time to make drawings/surprises for too many people though, so only the first 60 customers will get one!
After that, you can still pre-order normal signed ones from me, but yeah, no special surprises.