20100511 ~ News
Right now I'm into some new recordings for another album, and a possible release would be in the end of this summer (July/August). Ten new songs only for you my friends. Besides that I'm rehearshing full time with Wayback, first gig is about to take place at Herrljunga Folkets Park June 5th. Lookout for upcoming gigs at www.waybacklive.se!
20100426 ~ Wayback concert poster
Here's a shot of the new Wayback concert poster I made recently.
20100415 ~ NEWS
I've been totally busy with writing songs and rehearsing with the Wayback-band lately, and that's all I'm up to rigth now. Two new songs together with those three coversongs we recorded in February; 'Sanctuary' and 'Saints And Sinners', can be listened to in the player to the right, but notice that they're only demos and not rearranged by the whole band, it's just ideas out of a head in total extacy about making some really great and heavy rock and roll tunes. I'm hoping for a live preformance of those songs soon. We also had some photos taken recently and they look like something like this:
Don't miss us playing live at Herrljunga Folkets Park June 5 - two sets during that evening!
20100326 ~ wayback RELEASES NEW SONGS
At Waybacklive.se you can listen to three songs that we recorded February 27th that will be used for promotional purposes. The songs are "Last In Line" originally made by Dio, "Perfect Strangers" by Deep Purple and "Here I Go Again" by Whitesnake. Of course they are aviable here at www.JohanDarius.com!
20100223 ~ wayback records
Wayback will spend some time this upcoming Saturday in the studio to lay down a few tracks for an upcoming promo-cd. Recording it all live to catch the right mood being created on stage. Check out www.Waybacklive.se for more updates!
20100126 ~ What's up?
Right now I'm writing and recording some new stuff, three songs have been made already. I'm approaching my musical skills in a new different way, still in the movements of hard rock, but maybe a little more heavier. The songs maybe will wind up on some future recordings of the band Wayback, or maybe a new soloalbum of my own. We'll see.
You'll find more info about the band Wayback at waybacklive.se; upcoming gigs, music, videos and other stuff.
20100109 ~ wayback website
It's a new year, and what a year it will be! Another year that will be filled up with more rock and roll that you can imagine. Check out the new Waybacklive.se website for the band I joined last year. We recently had our premiere gig before the new years eve.
20091228 ~ wayback premieres tomorrow
Tomorrow the premiere gig with the coverband WayBack will take place at Falköpings Folkets Park, and the time set is 21.30! Don't miss it!
20091221 ~ Wish you a merry x-mas and waybacklive
Merry christmas to you all and see you at the Falköpings Folkets Park at the Folkrock Festival December 29. WayBack will enter the stage 20.30 that evening. We will play a set of 30-45 minutes of high octane rock and roll, don't miss it!
20091208 ~ UPCOMING GIGS WITH WAYBACK
This Saturday, December 12, the band WayBack which I joined earlier this fall will perform their first gig at Herrjunga Folkets Park. And we also have an upcoming gig December 29 in Falköpings Folkets Park. More info about the gigs will be up soon at the new WayBacklive.se webpage!
20091123 ~ Johan Darius in the local newspaper
Last Saturdays edition of Falköpings Tidning had me posing on the front cover and featured a full page interwiev with me about my life and the music which recieved a really good response. A full scan example will be up soon.
And I'm also about to release a four track EP with samples from the album that will be shipped later this week to radio and other media later this week. The tracks are as follows; Bad Boy Walking - Dirty Secrets - Not For the Innocent - A Golden Saint.
20091113 ~ the album is out!
Finally. The album is done and are now aviable to be listen to in the musicplayer to your right and also for download complete with covers and all.
The album can be downloaded seperatly file by file in the MUSIC-pages or completely as a ZIP-file HERE.
As said before, the album concists of eleven songs titled as follows:
JOHAN DARIUS - NOT FOR THE INNOCENT
01 - One Night Stands
02 - A Golden Saint
03 - Dirty Secrets
04 - Bad Boy Walking
05 - Not For the Innocent
06 - Drowned Again
07 - Bed Of Roses
08 - No Saint Of Perfection
09 - Rumble On
10 - Playing God
11 - In the Name Of the Dead
All music and lyrics are written by me and as all the cover artwork and layout. Also the whole album production is a complete effort of mine.
20091109 ~ Artwork for the album cover
The artwork and layout for the covers of the album "Not For the Innocent" is done in 300dpi JPEG files and look like this (made to fit a CD-jewelcase):
INLAY SHEET (click image to enlarge)
BACK INLAY SHEET (click image to enlarge)
20091105 ~ A CHILD IS BORN
I'm proud to announce that I recently had a newborn son who will be named Adam. Of course you know by know that you are aware of that I'm a very proud father.
By the way, the songs that you can hear in the player are not the final mixes, just prewievs, I'll be doing the final touch on the songs this weekend.
20091026 ~ In the mix
Right now I'm in the middle of mixing the album, but as there's some other stuff going on besides the album process it will take some more time on.
20091011 ~ Album delayment - wayback rehearsals
It will take me another week or two to finish the album, as I still have some vocals left to do on some of the tracks and then the mixing. But it WILL be ready later this month, have patience please.
Spent six hours rehearsing with the new friends in the band WayBack, and today we went through the Deep Purple track Pictures Of Home from the Machine Head album. It really clicked right away. Also talking about putting some own stuff together, that will be very interesting.
20090922 ~ Singing along
Just some fine adjustments with the interior in the song booth, then it's time for some sing along this weekend. It's getting closer for the mixing. And I can assure you it sounds great.
Last saturday I went for some auditioning in a band that call themselves WayBack. I can reveal that it all went great, totally awsome and crazy guys and we connected directly as we were playing some Purple and Rainbow songs. Going back next week for some rock and roll; singing and playing the guitar.
20090918 ~ PRESS RELEASE
Here is the press release that will be sent this weekwend:
- PRESS RELEASE FROM www.JohanDarius.com -
Johan Darius new album "Not For the Innocent" - will be released in October
In April, Swedish independent artist Johan Darius began the work on the album which is now approaching a stage of completion, an album that contains eleven tracks of heavy rock'n'roll with the title "Not For The Innocent". Among the songs are clever flirts with all of his influences from the 70's and 80's era of hard rock giants as KISS, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple and many others. The album will be available for free on www.JohanDarius.com for download, with a release in late October .
John Darius, 32, is an independent artist without any record company or publishing house in the back, now with more than fifteen years behind him as a musician in different constellations, finally got to devote all his time to his first full-length album, entirely with his own material and all performed and produced by himself. "It's a dream that I've had for a long, long time that finally came to life and now will be available to you all completely free on my own website, www.JohanDarius.com".
20090828 ~ WORKFLOW
All the tracks for the album will soon be ready for the the vocal sessions as all the guitarsolos are being done. Did some acoustic guitars on the Bed Of Roses track, and it turns out to be one of these bombastic ballads. First I didn't think a ballad would make it on the album, but hey, it's not a rock and roll album if it isn't a ballad in between all the other crunchers.
20090820 ~ Links updated
The links for the songs in the Music-page have been updated and checked so they all are valid. Check it out and take a listen here >>> Music
20090813 ~ ABOUT THE ALBUM
Finally I'm done with recording the basslines for all the songs. Together with some temporary guitars it sounds really cool. It sounds like nothing I have done before. I'm really proud of it all and a September release is what I hope for. Here is some info on the album: the title is going to be "Not For the Innocent" as I have told before and it consists of 11 songs, and the titles of the songs are as follows (not in any parrticular order):
NO SAINT OF PERFECTION
BAD BOY WALKING
DIRTY SECRETS
ONE NIGHT STANDS
DROWNED AGAIN
PLAYING GOD
BED OF ROSES
A GOLDEN SAINT
NOT FOR THE INNOCENT
RUMBLE ON
IN THE NAME OF THE DEAD
It's time to get my grip on the guitars later this week and I hope I can return with some samples for you soon. This weekend there will also be some photos shot for the albumcover and the website, have a lot of ideas and arrangements that I'm considering together with my wife, some pretty cool stuff.
20090730 ~ HOME
Had a cuple of weeks off and now I'm back home after some relaxation with my family. Recorded three songs together with my friend Johan Gustavsson in the beginning of July which will be posted at this site soon. We wrote two songs and completed with Twisted Sister's "The Price". Turned out pretty cool. Right now I'm doing the recording of the bassguitar on my own solorecord and simply realised that I had to complete the album with a closing/to-be-continued song! While the show is coming to an end there will be just one more... I will return later next week with some info on the upcoming album.
20090707 ~ ABOUT THE PROCESS
Right now I have finished all the drums for all of the songs together with a track-leading guitar just for following and see how the songs come together. Today I will lay down a few bass-tracks with my fretless Warwick Rock Bass which I purchsed last fall. It has a monsterous sound so I'm a little bit excited over how it will sound together with the guitars in the mix. All I can say so far about the songs is this: they have become to sound more heavier than anything I ever made before, thay are a lot more simple, straight and raw in-your-face kind of style, can't wait till they are completed and ready for mixing!
Some weeks of vication are coming up that I will spend together with my wife and family, but at first me and my friend Johan Gustavsson will have a few days for ourselves and record three or four songs that we recently wrote together, one ballad, one kick-ass piece and some pure rock and roll song. It will be posted to you at this page later this summer. Take care.
20090702 ~ MORE
I'm done with the drumtracks for eight more songs, two to go, and I can truly say it's very exciting how these songs turns out to be. I'va also laid some slash-guitars on the tracks just to see how the song sounds with all the changes of chords and how the lyrics fit. As I wrote the songs with my acoustic guitar, simply verse-bridge-chorus-verse, so I have to complete the songs with some arrangements of the soloparts and some harmonies. But they are all completed in my head, the hard work is to get it out from the inside as I want them to sound.And I can tell you that it sounds a lot more powerful than I expected!
I'm looking for a possible release by the end of this summer, as there's some weeks off were I just will spend some time together with my wife and family, but I'll try to work hard on this one (if the weather allows of course). You always have to take the oppurtunity of a bath late in the evening in a nearby lake.
20090629 ~ The first one out
This evening I recorded the drums for the first track on the album in my basement studio. Quite cool down there as we have about 30 degrees celsius outside. It felt good. No, I won't reveal any titles yet for the song but I can tell as much as this; this track is going to be the "single" of the album that will get posted to different sites all around the web. It's a cool raw up-tempo song in 185 bpm, it whips the ass off of anbody. This summer rocks.
20090624 ~ NEW GUITAR
Yesterday I went to my local musical instrument store and traded my acoustic Tanglewood guitar with built-in microphone for a new Ibanez AEL20E Vintage Violin model as shown in the picture below. I'm also working on a Swedish version of the website to be published in July.
20090612 ~ BACK ON TRACK
Back home from the Sweden Rock Festival and totally wasted.. well, not quite, but I saw two of my favourite bands; Heaven And Hell and Twisted Sister and they did some tremendous performances. And now after another week full of work I will begin the recording sessions. As soon as possible I will release a first "single" of the album, not quite sure of which song yet, but it will be a cruncher. And soon it's time for vications and then I will have the possibility of working full-time in the studio.
And I have also started another project, but I won't reveal any details yet just this; it's going to be a three-track demo of songs directed to the younger ones in our world - the children! The most beautiful creatures ever walked the earth. More details later.
20090603 ~ HEADING FOR SWEDEN ROCK FESTIVAL
This year it's going to be the 10th visit for me at the Sweden Rock Festival, and this years line-up is one of the greatest in a long time; Heaven And Hell (Black Sabbath anno 1980 with Dio), Twisted Sister, In Flames, Johnny Winter and some swedish old bands reunited for the first time since the early seventies. Well, see for your self by paying a visit to www.SwedenRock.com and click Festival. Hope I'll see a lot of you all there!
20090426 ~ CONSTRUCTION OF THE STUDIO COMES TO AND END
As you can see in these two pictures I have begun to place all my stuff in the room now - soon I will begin the recording sessions.
20090426 ~ STUFF
Right now I'm just in the middle of putting the floor together and some painting on the walls down in the studioroom. I've also managed to put together ten new songs for the upcoming recording-session which I hope will begin in the middle of May. Then I also will continue to dig around in my archive of old recordings, because I've got a lot of tapes and I know there's a lot of interesting material there. Look out for upcoming mp3-files of those older songs in a near future, filed under "Music" in the manue.
20090415 ~ REMINDER of a diary
Just want to remind you of the JD's Diary, a plave where I share my moments and thoughts through-out the week, but only in swedish though. Besides taking care of our house now when springtime is here, I work in the basement to finish the studio, now I only have some painting to do and put together a nice floor to it. And to my upcoming album i now have eight songs ready so far, and everyone of them are very satisfying to me. But well see when they turn to shape during the later sessions.
20090406 ~ Pictures and stuff
Me and Johan Gustavsson had our first gig last saturday as troubadours introducing our new PA-system with Mackie active speakers, Torque stage monitors and a Yamaha mixer with built-in effects and compressor. But I'm a little disappointed with one of my guitars, a Tanglewood with built-in mic system, it seems that it doesn't admits the sound to a plain level of all the strings, so this week I'll head for the musicstore to trade it for an Ibanez instead.
And the construction of my homestudio continues to move forward, and I have put up some pictures of it in the Photo-section. And of course I'm proud to reveal that up to this date I have about six songs ready for the new recording-session. Almost can't wait to begin the recordings of the album.
20090331 ~ HOMESTUDIO CONSTRUCTION
I have begun to put up the deviding walls in one of the rooms I have in the cellar of the house, and it's very exciting. The intentions with this construction is to have a little space of my own were I can record the demos of my songs, without disturbing the rest of the people in the house and vice versa.
And I'm not in for the calculating of the Hertz and soundwaves like in the creation of an ordinary studio, I would just like to have a good acoustic feeling about the place and get rid of some disturbing noice from the rest of the building. I will continue to report about this project in my Diary where I also put up some pictures of the whole thing, so be sure to check it out from time to time.
20090323 ~ WELCOME BACK (TO YOU AND MYSELF)
Well, I welcome you back to this place, a new and fresh www.JohanDarius.com which I will take more serious care of in the future, it's been a while. So what have I been up to recently? I have started the creation of my own homestudio in the basement, where I will make new and exciting music as I've got a whole bunch of new songs, the first one will be posted during next month.
Besides that there's some new recordings of some covers like KISS' Hide Your Heart from the 1989's album Hot In the Shade, and Guns 'N' Roses' Sweet Child 'O Mine. I also wrote and recorded a track together with my best friend Johan Gustavsson, called When Hate Grows Old. Note that these are demoversions so we fool around a littlebit with the tracks, you know you got to have fun making music. I will feed the MP3player at your right with the latest posted songs as soon as I put them up. Also be shure to visit the music page to download and listen to older material and some rare related stuff.
Ok, that's all for now. Take care.
20090128 ~ OLD SHIT
So, I found another recording on a minidisc the other day, and I felt there was some really good stuff there, amongst them a song called "Sacrifice" that i sing with all the pain out of my heart (well, it sounds like it) and some groovy covers of The Who's song "Behind Blue Eyes" and KISS' "C'mon and Love Me". Take a listen and enjoy!
20080829 ~ Back on track!
Well, it's been a while since I updated this page, but I've been going through a lots of great things lately; moved to a house, installing new equipment, writing songs, vication etc. But I'm going to be more effective in my musicproduction and record a great bunch of new songs; more heavier and agressive, more minor chords, guests on vocals and more exciting stuff that I will reveal later. So keep up with this site during this fall and let the rock roll on...
20080402 ~ News
So finally I got the www.MySpace.com/JohanDariuscom up and running again, check it out!
20080320 ~ News
Right know I'm recording new material, the first song are soon to be finished and it's called "Rumble on". A little bit of 80's touch with some influences by Danko Jones and Ace Frehley. It's going to be included in a ten song album suite that will be released hopefully in may via this website. Completely free and aviable for download right here at johandarius.com!
20080301 ~ News
Well, hello again, finally I'm back after the new years have begun with a lot of bussiness that had to be taken care of. For a starter I bought some new recording equipment as a new ACM Frost computer, a cuple of monitors, mixers and some other shit for heavy music making. And most important of all I started to write new material. And at the same time I rehearse with the coverband twice a week and me and my buddy Johan Gustavsson recently dug into recording some new songs, and the first one out is called "It's A Man Thing".
It's going to be heavy with a lot of harmonies (as usual - as the freaks of harmony we are) and pounding drums.
And right now I'm having a blast as I'm going to see my favourite band KISS this summer. Going to the shows in Stockholm, Oslo and Copenhagen + I would really like to see Ace Frehley at the Sweden Rock Festival, the coolest guitarplayer I ever seen. Really exciting. By the way, be sure to leave a comment in the new Guestbook, hope to hear from you all soon. Peace.
/Johan Darius
20071222 ~ Gossip
A cuple of months ago I auditioned as singer and guitarist in a band and now it's official; I'm in. We have started to rehearshal as a hard rock coverband and so far
we have worked through about ten songs. For example "Killing In the Name Of" by Rage Against the Machine, "NIB" by Black Sabbath, "Celebrety Skin" by Hole and "Mother" by Danzig. It feels like it's going to be a blast!
And of course I would like to wish you all a very merry X-mas!
20071103 ~ Demo 2001
Here's the one, the most serious thing I've done so far with my own material, and it's a demo called "One Of Mine". Recorded late fall 2000 with Petter Lantz as engineer (formerly bassplayer of the Swedish rockband Lambretta) and Mats Tornebohm (drummer of Beneath), it contained four songs that I wrote between 1997-1999. "One Of Mine" became the tile track and the "Kiss the Edge Of My Life..." was re-recorded as "Tid Att Gå" later in 2002 (to be found in the download-section) and they were ment to be the heavier stuff, as "Killing Myself For You" were added as a gloomy ballad, and the "Angels Crying", a song about God, life and misery.
By the way, "Why?" were recorded later that night but we never kept it because I didn't really felt it would fit in with the rest of the material.
20071026 ~ MySpace
As problems has occured with the MySpace JohanDariusCom, the site will be posponed for a while.
20071022 ~ Announcement
I'm proud to announce that last Saturday, October 20th, I got married with my dearest. We wanted just a small cermony so just family we're invited and we had a great calm wedding day.
20070904 ~ Auditioned for lead singer
Last week I went to an audition for a local band as a lead singer. I think it went great and now after three rehearsals together we all feel good with eachother, and now I'm just waiting for the final call. I think it will be a blast, hope to see you live out there soon. Other things going on right now is that I'm writing new material that will be presented to you later this fall. I've had some troubles with the equipment in the studio so the earlier announced cd that was ment to be released at this time will be delayed a cuple of months. Hope you're not too disappointed with this, and to compensate I will feed you with some older goodies during this time, as earlier recorded demos found in the vaults. So keep up with this site and the Downloads-section.
20070826 ~ New Rockin' Sounds Radio!
I found a cd yesterday as I was going through some boxes full of tapes and posters(!) and I found this recording made August 21 2002, and it contained the whole radioshow made during this night at the danish radio station DAB in Aarhus, and the show was called "New Rockin' Sounds" and hosted by Tommy Lee (! not THAT Tommy) and Robert, a really nice guy from Australia. I played two songs in the show, then we had a barbeque and a cuple of Carlsberg Hof and later that night, we went back to the studio and recorded three more. When I heard this I thought to myself that this is one of the best recordings I ever heard with myself going solo. I've only seen a video filmed back in 1997, but that one had quite poor sound and picture. Damn, it's great to have some beer, being relaxed and in good hands.
20070810 ~ New Directory In Downloads
I've opened up a new directory in the Download-section, simply called "The Archives". The first thing I found was a recording of the Swedish artist Pugh Rogefeldt (first one ever to sing rock'n'roll in swedish by the way), a song called "Små Lätta Moln" (transl. 'Small Little Clouds') which I've recorded sometime in 2003 on my porta-studio. I remeber this evening, two tracks of guitars, bass and some harmonies on the vocals, that's all. Hope you will enjoy it, 'cause there's more to come!
20070730 ~ Another cover song
Well, you'll have to take it for what it is, me and my friend Johan just wanted to have some fun a Wednesday's evening, and here's a tune that we proudly(?) would like to share with you. It's a cover of Kiss' 1984 track "Heaven's On Fire" from the Animalize album. We tried it out as we've decieded to make a more heavier version of this song soon. Remeber were you first heard it!!
20070506 ~ New toy
Recently recieved my new guitar, a Washburn A20CS and god damn what a great instrument! The sound of this thing breaks mostly everything I earlier have laid my hands upon. Finally I've got the guitar with a capital "G". It will be a treat to play on this one in the future.
20070422 ~ New song added
A new song was recorded and completed this weekend, a track called "Ensamvarg" - yes, a new song in swedish, - and have now been added to the list of downloads. Listen, and then why not leave me your comments in the Guestbook.
20070327 ~ "Makin' Love" #6 at KissArmySweden.com
My cover of the amazing Kiss track "Makin' Love" recently landed at position #6 in KissArmySweden.com's MP3-list of the week. Exciting!
20070301 ~ New hot www.johandarius.com
The site johandarius.com had another face-lift with some new songs and more to come! Be sure to leave me a comment in the Guestbook area if you're around! Went to see Pugh Rogefeldts acoustic performance in Götene, outside Skara last week, completely brilliant! "Guldgruvan" with harmonica only, and the claps and stomps from the audience, that feeling cannot be described - you have to be there! "The Cold Light Of Day" and "No Saint Of Perfection" are two brandnew tracks with lyrics and music by me. You'll find them above under recent files where all of my new uploaded files will be included.
20070111 ~ Brandnew with Darius/Gustavsson
Recently we recorded "A Promise Is A Promise", the first song we wrote to be our own and the result of a collaboration between me and my friend Johan Gustavsson. And be sure there will be more to come! The lyrics were written by me as we did the music together. Recorded in late December and mixed in January 2007. Click the file above.
20061113 ~ Johan Darius on www.AllEars.se
I've begun to add tracks on the new AllEars.se website, a place for unsigned artists.
20060221 ~ Info
Johan is in the mix of his three new songs that soon will be presented to you shortly. Besides that he's working on some old material that spans over almost a decade back. Congratulations to Hebbe och Linda! - brandnew parents to little Alice february 15th!
20051107 ~ Webside Uploaded JohanDarius.com finally here - discover all the beatiful music in the world of me.