For the first part of the year I’ve been doing a lot of mixing work for other artists, something I always find very inspiring.

The new Opeth album Pale Communion was mixed into stereo and 5.1 at my studio in February. I also sang harmony vocals. It’s by no stretch of the imagination a metal record but it’s still plenty heavy and a great piece of work – for me the epic orchestrated ballad “Faith in Others” that closes the album is Mikael’s finest achievement to date. Pale Communion is released by Roadrunner on 17th June. It’s also the first Opeth album to be recorded and mixed in higher resolution 96/24. I hope Roadrunner will release a high res format, but I don’t know their plans on that.

At the start of the year I mixed the new solo album by my long term friend and collaborator Tim Bowness. Abandoned Dancehall Dreams mainly consists of songs Tim wrote with a No-Man record in mind, and was recorded with members of the touring band, so the material definitely has that DNA. The album is released by InsideOut on 23rd June.

Other mixes I have done recently are 4 songs on the forthcoming Anathema album Distant Satellites, released by Kscope on 9th June, and one song on John Wesley’s fantastic new album Disconnect, which was just released by InsideOut.

From here on I’m focusing on writing more material for my next album, which I plan to record with my band in the Summer. More news soon…