A very short update since a video one will be more appropriate in the situation!
We’re back to Brittany, right on time for a beautiful sold out concert in Brest, in the beautiful venue of La Carêne.
We came back with a rental car, and left our Camper van near Stuttgart, with yes, another mechanical issue. Yes, it has to do with the first failure.
No, it’s not because it wasn’t fixed properly, but because we couldn’t fix and check all of the potential issues due to where we were, and the equipment we had.
But we did all our concerts back in Germany, and we managed to get all our equipment and instruments back to Brittany. We have a few options with the fixing of the camper. We’ll see.
In the meantime, some pictures from yesterday! Because in the end, that’s why we do all of that!
Your friends might thank you for letting them know about our music !
Please 🙏 leave us a small comment if you watch the video. 🌬️
It makes us happy, we get to know you, and it really helps to grow our channel and ultimately to get our music to a larger audience which could really make our lives easier! 🎵 ✨
We’re boarding to Germany this afternoon!
En français
Please 🙏 laissez nous un petit commentaire sous la vidéo, et abonnez-vous. 🌬️
Ça nous fait tellement plaisir, mais aussi, ça nous aide à vous connaître aussi. Et en bonus ça aide à la visibilité de la chaîne, ce qui aide aussi à faire connaître notre musique. Et peut-être un jour nous faciliter les choses quand on cherche des concerts. 🎵 ✨ 🎶
Embarquement sur le ferry pour l’Allemagne cette après-midi !
Your friends might thank you for letting them know about our music !
Next video will be an experimental music video and should be up later on this evening.
Ha oui, on donne des nouvelles en vidéo *et* en français. 📽️ C’était pas le genre de nouvelles qu’on aurait voulu donner, mais on fera avec! 🚒 On teste une chaîne séparée pour les Vlogs en français, vous pouvez vous abonner ! 🙏
Les vidéos musicales restent pour le moment sur la chaîne principale. ⛓️💥 Et on vous prépare quelque chose pour ce soir.
Your friends might thank you for letting them know about our music !
We are in sunny Serbia, under a beautiful blue sky and a bright spring sun.
It’s day 2 of our small tour, yesterday we played in Subotica, very close to the Hungarian border.
The blue 🔵 dot is us! Driving to the next concert!
Unexpected, inspiring, fulfilling, vibrant.
These are a few words to describe the evening. We were performing because of the kind invitation of the Siberian folk band Vedan Kolod.
A lovely venue dedicated to art and music, a small audience with an open mind and heart, it was easy and so natural to share our world.
A world in which we look in our culture for what can create connections between people, regardless of their origins, language or culture.
Our music and concerts are a gate towards others. It’s what inspires us, and keeps us creating.
We’re not always very good at filming our tours, and travels, but this time we are filming a little bit more of this journey.
We’ve taken for granted a free world, in which travels are easy, but we can’t predict the future.
It makes every opportunity to enjoy the freedom to connect even more meaningful and precious. And worth sharing.
Last but not least, we’ll slowly be moving away from social media, and we’re experiencing how we can use more our YouTube channel (www.youtube.com/@astrakanproject) as well as this website and our newsletter.
If you have any ideas and/or suggestions, feel free to use the comment section. What we loved about social media was precisely the idea of social interactions and connections.
But since it got a bit lost along the way, we’ll do what we’re the best at: use our creativity to recreate that connection in another more fulfilling way.
A galon,
Simone + Yann behind the wheel 😉
Your friends might thank you for letting them know about our music !
We’re still like many of us processing what’s happening in the world and more specifically what’s going on the other side of the Atlantic.
Maybe due to the state of our language and culture, and the history behind it, we’ve never considered our official country (France, to make things clear) like a perfect example of a democracy. Many things would need to radically change for that.
Another kind of painting.
Now, we’ve entered 2025. Social media is everywhere. And for some people it’s even everything. This definitely saddens us, as it tends to be the opposite of what life and art is for us. Something complex, with layers, personal, enlighting. Something that is more of an experience, preferably a transformative one, than a result at a given moment.
Not only does it lack depth for what we want to bring into the world, but it’s never been so controlled.
Recognizing the place?
The big question is, how do we proceed from there? And here, for charity, we mostly mean us, Astrakan Project, and the way we will carry on expressing our art for you to experience it.
Which “platform”, which media, which medium? So many questions. (Any suggestions welcomed)
We have loads of ideas for next albumS (yes, plural!), and still can’t even completely decide on the physical form for it. Digital obviously from the least controlling platform that we’ve used for all our releases. But maybe also directly from us?
A physical edition would be wonderful. But we can’t so far decide. Again, ideas welcome in the comments or via email astrakanproject@gmail.com.
But the rest? We have this website/blog.
We don’t own it completely, it’s still hosted. And it’s WordPress.
Writing takes time.
Reading takes time
And maybe we need to get back into a space in which we know we don’t have time for it all. We can’t be everything, everywhere for everyone. That’s a sure creativity killer. And maybe even a humanity killer.
All of this to say, you might have noticed (or not, even better !),we barely post anymore on social media. We closed our accounts on Twitter and Instagram – tbh we were not using them for long years already.
But we also almost stopped posting on Facebook, either on our page or personal accounts. Just announcements for gigs like in the old times.
For the most part, we stopped sharing anything creative or creating anything to post in there. And we have no plans of changing that.
At this point, there are other social alternatives, popping around. But they all are still just that. Social media that will generally lack the depth that enriches life.
We long for conversations. For connections.
And that’s what we’re focusing on now. On stage gigs, traveling to meet people, organisers – instead of reaching out via email. And it’s changing our life. At least it’s making it richer and more fulfilling.
We’ll obviously continue with videos. Because, that’s my passion, you know! So plenty is possible online.
Like our Wild Live Songs project.
Like video projects.
Like writing about cultures and languages.
Like collaborative video projects.
So much to be created and shared!
Today, we’re still under the sun in Portugal, and enjoying that time to do some paint jobs on our old camper van that were impossible in Brittany – well, it’s been rainy you know!
And while I’m waiting for the paint to dry, I realized this is also part of who we are as artists. Completely reconstructing an old camper van so that we can travel and create from anywhere is who we are.I
It’s what allows us to create independently, as freely as we can.
Our music doesn’t come from fancy studios, from well-financed productions with public founding, or from the external expectations that those well founded projects always imply.
It comes from making it work. From making choices daily that will make it possible for us to continue, and for our music to exist in the physical world we live in.
Some days, it comes from fixing the paint on your old camper van – but under the Portuguese sun ☀️
Take care, stay creative, stay independent, but mostly, find joy in daily life!
A galon, Simone
Your friends might thank you for letting them know about our music !
We had recorded this song back in 2023, and filmed plenty of sequences while travelling around in Sweden last fall, which was both fitting and inspiring. And then… Breton winter happened!
The longest and darkest winter we ever had in Brittany, long days of rain, and heavy dark grey clouds over our heads had quite an impact on our working and creative flow. When Ciarann tempest hit Brittany, on the day of the Celtic New Year, that was a sign, wasn’t it?
Apart from the difficulty of doing anything outdoors, like filming or taking pictures, we also had to deal with a few issues on our house. Leaks on our roof appeared, mostly due to so many rainy days without the natural stone (slate) being able to dry.
Needless to say, that kept us busy! not in the nicest way.
My (Simone here!) personal health also paid its tribute to these harsh conditions, and time for some warm dry sun was much needed.
That’s how we headed to Portugal for a few weeks, and finally find the energy to finalise this video! We hope you’le enjoy it. And we hope at some point, this song could make its way to an album – yes! We’re still debating on how to make the next album.
Wishing you all a nice spring, enjoy the music, enjoy the sun,
Blessings from sunny Brittany!
Your friends might thank you for letting them know about our music !
. astrakan project . 