TIMO KOTIPELTO - Remote Control! Page 3
by Martin Popoff

I wondered, given the collapse of Stratovarius' arrangement with the announced female lead vocalist, if Timo could ever see himself back in the band... "Well, I mean, if you would have seen him, like he behaved over the last few months, I don't see there is any chance. I mean, he's not himself at all. He's completely, well... if I say, in my opinion, that he's a little bit mad, I don't want to say it in a bad way. But that's the way it is. He's mentally unstable. He started going downhill last September or after our tour in South America, which ended in August. It's hard to say whether he will recover or not. I know he's under a very heavy medication, whatever that means. It's like triple anti-depression medication, I heard. But I don't know what that means."

Why the title Coldness for this album, and why this cover art?

"Well, I had this idea about the cover artwork already last September. Because I was writing the lyrics in a cottage, actually two different cottages, by the lake, near my hometown. So I went there, and then I had this vision, because musically I'm going back to my roots, I thought that I also want to go visually back to my roots, and I wanted to present a Finnish winter for the people who have never seen it. It's like... it can be this dark. It's also, a little bit artistically done, some of these things on the cover. But it's also like this, I had some photos which were taken by my father and I scanned those photos and I sent them over for Mattias Noren, the Swedish guy who did the cover. And we talked by email, and I had my ideas, and he said I know what exactly what you mean, I know what you mean. So that was easy, working with him, because he's also from Scandinavia and he knows how the winters are here. He knew what I wanted and I'm more than satisfied with his work. I'm very happy about the cover."

TIMO KOTIPELTO - Remote Control! Page 4