Radioactive Pineapple: 116 Days of Summer Guests

Follow me

This is a story about the process of making our new EP ”Insane.” I’m Jake from Radioactive Pineapple and I hope you enjoy your time reading this!

The first demos probably date back to 2020, when we were finishing the recording of our debut album ”YES!” (which wasn’t released until 2022). ”Angry” was one of the first demos, soon to be followed by ”Clown”. We also wrote some other songs that are still to be recorded, so let’s hope they’ll see daylight sometime.

We spent most of 2020 and 2021 recording and mixing ”YES!” and couldn’t play live due to the pandemic. However, there was a skateboarding event in 2021 in which we were supposed to play at, and we even added both of the songs mentioned above to the setlist, but the event was cancelled eventually.

In 2022 Pineapple woke up from a long sleep and things picked up the pace. Back then me and Thoubi (our drummer) were also playing in a band called Stunted City, which however went (and has since been) on hiatus in February 2022 after our bassist left for Austria. On lead guitar we had this guy called Johnsson, with whom we then started talks about trying out for Pineapple. After a period of trial and error, Johnsson eventually made his live-debut with us and has been a part of our line-up since (although he didn’t appear on ”YES!”). His inclusion meant that lead guitar parts on new songs got more diverse than they originally were, which was quite a fresh change.

After releasing ”YES!” we promoted it by playing live as much as we could. At the same time we worked on the new songs with our new line-up and things started to get their shape. ”Angry” and ”Clown” were rearranged, followed by ”Insane,” ”So Long Suckers” and eventually ”Spend the Night”. In late 2022 we demoed the songs and started planning the actual recording sessions. During the demo-phase I was mocked for my accent so I started practicing to fade it out as much as possible. The funny thing is, however, that most of my final lead vocal tracks on the EP are the exact same ones as on the demos.

The recording took place between December 2022 and March 2023. We had to hurry with the lead guitars since Johnsson was about to leave for student exchange in the Netherlands in early February and his parts had to be done by then. We managed to get his guitars done but didn’t have time for his backing vocals so his singing-voice remains yet to be heard in Pineapple. After that, me and Ozzie recorded the remaining bass, guitar and vocal parts before mixing and mastering. To promote the EP, we also released a series of live sessions and interviews on Youtube.

The final excitement was the release-date. We booked a show at Hard Rock House Roihuvuori on June 16th and thought that it would be a cool place for an album release party. Ozzie had to work 14-hour-days or something like that, but eventually he got his magic done and the album was submitted to Distrokid in early June, just in time for the intended release date.