I have a place of my own. Ever watched Six Feet Under? Nathaniel turns out to have this little room of his own with a vinyl player - I have that. Both the room and the vinyl player!

See, I had this idea that we would record the next album in our rehearsing room, as live as possible. So I thought, it might be good to have a control room of sorts, and I asked if there were any small rehearsal room available - and dear Alex showed me an empty one just across the hallway - perfect! Then as we commenced trial recordings it turned out we didn't need a control room - who would want to run between rooms anyway? But I already had the other room, and the first step was taken.

I had a room of my own - I haven't had that since I was in high school, not really. So this would be my work area, but also my own haven...

When I got the room it was a cold little room with white and black walls lined by bright yellow pine boards, and a semi-black linoleum carpet - all lit by two horrible bright industry lamps. You should see it now...

All 60s and 70s style, I painted the pine boards transparent dark brown and put two lovely orange glass lamps up in the ceiling, spreading a soft light over the thick beige wall-to-wall carpet that sits proudly under decorative items such as a Vox AC15 amplifier, an Astrosound vinyl player from the year 2 AD or so, and some cozy sitting chairs in a color that is not really yellow nor green (one of them is a bat-shaped 60s type chair). On my desk I have my MacBook Pro sided by a retro design radio, a stapler from the 70s and a round orange/red lamp that looks pretty much like Mars. On the walls you can spot the occasional Kiss posters from the mid-70s, a big Abbey Road poster (what else?), my beautiful Tanglewood acoustic guitar and my old '79 Fender Stratocaster that I've had since I was ten.

Then Johan Hallgren gave me two large crates of vinyl albums that someone left behind somewhere in the building where he works, and you wouldn't believe it! Half a crate of Jimi Hendrix original vinyls. You also have your old Pink Floyd, Sweet, Small Faces, Hair... you name it. I even found the original Virgin Killer album by Scorpions, the one with the very dubious cover that was banned in most parts of the world and also the album where you'll find Yellow Raven, a song that we've performed live with Pain of Salvation quite a few times.

I love my little den. I light incense and candles, I play old albums on the vinyl player, and I work on music - something that is getting increasingly harder in this over-communicative world. I plug Léo's Gibson Les Paul into my Vox amp and I actually record a song, just like that. The amp is one meter to my right, the vocal booth is one meter to my left, and my small Apogee Duet audio interface is right in front of me. Creativity is at my finger tips again, just like it used to be when I was a kid and had my cassette recorder with dubbing feature. And it makes me happy.