Some pictures and close-ups from the final painting done for Peter Breughel video…
From the video :
{ full story here if you have missed how we came to make the cover of this Flemish folk song }
§ Simone
Author: Astrakan Project
Ideas in the night… hunting artists!
We can’t tell enough how bad both of us have slept recently! It always gets back to the same: since we are (unfortunately!) not touring this month, we started to work on a couple of side projects. We generally can’t stay long without trying out new things, but also we can’t just go from all the huge amount of work we did to release the album to just “being relaxing” – we need some kind of a transition.
But as it always happens, the more we work, the more we get inspired, and the more ideas we get… until they start hunting us in the night.
It requires a bit of organisation here: always have a notepad by your bed-side! Side trouble is: the day after we’re tired of sleep deprivation, and don’t really get much done…
One part of the cure will probably be next gigs we’ll have in a month in France and UK! Finally some action!
§ Simone.
The Sun always shines on TV
Last Sunday, we had the honour to be the guest of the Breton TV show Bali Breizh, on France 3 channel. The team was incredibly nice ans fun, it was really a delight to spend that moment with them…
And we also played two songs from last album – and really, on a TV stage, all looks awesome: fancy lightings, many cameras… we love the result! Don’t you feel like sharing it around?
If you have some reasonable French knowledge, you might be able to follow the show with it’s French subtitles, because it’s… 100% in Breton! Really… this is almost too cool! We want to be on TV everyday!!!
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2ecl2z_bali-breizh-sul-11-a-viz-genver-astrakan-project_tv
PS… Title of courses refers to… (yes, we really do love 80’s music)
Pieter Breughel in Brussel – Wannes Van de Velde cover
Last June when we played in Belsele at ‘t Ey (Belgium), Dirk from the very nice team hosting us that night played this Flemish song that we then heard for the first time,on the piano… the moment was magical! And we both thought once we’d have some time we would try to work on a version of ours. Moreover the song from Wannes Van de Velde is about Pieter Brughel (the XVI° painter, that painted The Tower of Babel) and his dilemma and understanding of how due to political changes, from Spanish language people in Flanders had switched to French when his own language was Flemish.
This is the original version we worked from – pronunciation is so clear and detached despite of the speed space! It has been a challenging exercise to find the balance between some Flemish-Antwerp sounds and the way I normally would pronounce it in Dutch – that is: with an obvious French flavour!
The Tower of Babel, the famous painting from Pieter Breughel relates to the biblical story about misunderstanding between humans caused by different languages. For us it relates to the awesome richness of humanity, and more than other things reminds us of our stay in South-East of Turkey, in the areas of Mardin and Diyarbakir and to a certain extend in Lebanon. What we most loved was the blurred border between human groups. You can’t easily tell who belongs to which group, based on what? religion? language? accent? race??? Surprisingly and in its own way, Diyarbakir was much more cosmopolitan than Istanbul. Our plan for after the album’s release was actually to go back and cross the border to Northern Iraq, which sadly is at the moment totally impossible. Sadly also we see how this rich mixture of cultures is dying in one of the most important areas for our cultures.
For those who wonder, we both speak some reasonable Dutch since we lived in The Netherlands for a while but…. a loooooong time ago!
We hope you’ll enjoy it as much as La Jotinette! 😉
§ Simone
Barzh an Ifern with Gwendal Moele
Last time we were in the UK, we took the chance to record a new version of Barzh an Ifern with Gwendal Moele that we had met there a couple of months ago – and we are delighted with that version that we made available for download here – beware! You should feel like starting dancing! (it’s a download on pay-what-you-want, if you’re broken at the moment, enter “0”!). We can’t say how much we love this version that has this wild ambiance you find in Kan ha Diskan (traditional way of singing for dance in Brittany, with 2 singers, originally a-capela)
In the meantime, Yann also remastered our previous EP Within The Circle (to which we indeed added Barz an Ifern) – if you have bought it already, please, just up-date your version and download it for free – just enter “0” for the amount!
And to remember where it started from, here is the video from our gig together in Ipswich in October
Remember 2014…
We just came across this video T’Ey team had done and edited recently with rushes from the concert we gave there in June 2014 (in Belsele, Belgium). Just tiny bits… that already feel like ages for us, we’ve changed quite a lot of stuff on stage, sounds, songs also, different loops… It’s always nice to look back and see/hear the evolution!
Bloavezh Mat – Happy new year message
Normally in Brittany, it is possible, acceptable, usual to wish “happy new year”… until the 31st of January! But since we have many other things – including music and video – to share in the up-coming days, we’ll start with a short message – and a cool new inside!
§ Yann & Simone
La Jotinette – help us win a little contest!
“La Jotinette” is the name of a tune from Central France (the name of the dance is bourrée nivernaise). We entered a little contest on facebook, and proposed our version with a little video. Music-wise it kind of sounds… well, probably more Breton than from real central France!
For the video, I used dances from Greece (a lot of Zeybekiko but not only), from Turkey (including some Zeybek by Atatürk!), from Galicia and of course from Central France.
To support us, like the original post on the Facebook page here (only “like” the post, not the actual YouTube video – although you also may!)
We really really had a lot of fun putting the music and video together, we hope you’ll like it and support our version, because we want to go there to get our prize (a special smoked ham!), that would be a perfect excuse to meet musicians from there… and maybe make a jam session around “La Jotinette”!
§ Simone
Sales VS Creativity
It’s always about the same. We released last album 2 months ago, we’re still in the middle of promoting, and actually we should even be doing more in that direction – by more, I mean do more follow up, check if it has been received, if it will be published/played/reviewed.
I should also put more effort on putting together next gigs & tour. Not that I’m not putting any effort, but basically I should be spending more than half of my days on the phone. But guess what? It’s not my thing. Neither Yann’s.
And things got worst when we get ideas for new songs coming in and chasing us even at night! Not big projects as such, not planned for any album (but who knows?), but mostly side-projects that we’d love to work on, just to see what happens, just to experiment and have fun. And well, since last January 2014 when we started to work on the album, we got a lot of these “let’s take a note and come back to it after the album’s release”.
In other words, I don’t know how that happen, but we already have loads of work in progress!
In the meantime, I pushing myself hard to keep on trying to get new gigs, it’s probably a matter of balance… but I love so much more to bring new ideas to life!
§ Simone
Promo time for album B!
We are really lucky we’ve been hosted by many nice people to promote our new album – it’s always a great chance to get our music out into the world while meeting very nice people at our interviews.
We’ve been to local radio Arvorig FM – a 100% in Breton language radio. (you can stream it online!)
We’ve also been to France Bleu Breizh Izel (local branch of the national radio) where we recorded two shows, one in Breton and one bilingual – they should be on air this week, watch out our facebook page to get notified.
And also we played already 2 show-cases, one in Brest at the book & music shop l’Oreille KC:
And another in Morlaix today, again at a book & music shop called Dialogues:
So… all is well, and our little album is little by little getting to get heard in many places around Brittany. 🙂 But there is still more to come!
§ Simone
. astrakan project . 