Pics on Tour

Pictures from our concerts, from others concerts, from moments we want to share
Blog, Musicians' Diary, Pics on Tour

News from Serbia

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News from Serbia

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 😉

Pics on Tour, Sound & Video

Brittany in Paris + How does Breton language sound like

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Brittany in Paris + How does Breton language sound like

‘Last week-end we had the chance to spend 4 days in Paris for “Fête de la Bretagne” celebrations, all happening in the borough n°XIV (XIV arrondissement as we say in French). This particular area of Paris is renown and famous for a major migration from Brittany from the end of the XIXth century on. It is actually in the West part of Paris, and surrounding the train station Montparnasse that connects with Breton cities and towns.

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Picture Camille Le Floch

Even nowadays, it does have a funny familiar Breton flavour, in some streets (rue du Montparnasse, rue d’Odessa) you’ll find loads of Crêperies (breton pancake restaurant) one next to each other, we never get that many at the same place in Brittany! La Mission Bretonne, founded in 1947, is at the heart of this community, and organises any sort of cultural events throughout the year, from concerts to exhibitions, music, danse, breton language classes, meetings, well, not to miss if you are around in Paris and want to meet people with some interest in Breton/Celtic culture (don’t forget to mention you came because of us!). They are the ones organising 10 days of Bretons events in Mai to celebrate Breton culture, and had the great idea to invite us 🙂

Here are some words from both of us after our out-doors gig next to City Council from Paris XIVème – if you want to hear Yann, jump to 9’30 where he’s interviewed from the kids playground area!

Pics on Tour

Kiev Tour… we love Ukraine!

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Can we say in a couple of words that playing in Kiev last week was an impressive and life changing experience? The type of experiences that opens your eyes to many new horizons and worlds. What made it different? Maybe the fact that neither us, neither the audiences had any fixed expectations, apart from being part of something?

We had to forget about many things we are used to: schedules, legal authorisations, … Yep, we even played outdoors without any real authorisation (because anyway, there isn’t any “authority” one could get a valid authorisation from… kind of), police came at the end of the Friday’s and Saturday’s concerts because of noise, and no need to mention that the first time we were quite … scared? Oh yes… Organisers/promoters dealt with them while we were packing. But before that… we had awesome times! Great energy on stage!

We feel we are so lucky in western Europe to have peace, freedom and clear rights and obligations… do we really make the best of it?

§ Simone

Musicians' Diary, Pics on Tour

Busking in European cities – Part 2

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Let’s talk today about busking in the German world, which means Germany, Austria and Switzerland (sorry, I will not be talking about german minorities from Hungary, Czech republic, Romania or Serbia…).

Germany : it seems that there’s no particular regulation as far as I know (maybe I’m wrong !), but what I can say is that you should never busk in front of a bank or a jewellery. You’ll get kicked off by security staff even before you start playing ! 😉 I had this experience in Ulm.

ULM
Ulm, next to the Cathedral.

The other thing I know from my own experience : don’t expect to earn much money from busking in Germany ! It is a very different atmosphere compared to Greece (for example), my feeling (maybe wrong) is that people look somewhat anxious !

Switzerland : Rather complicated, each city has its own rules. You may generally be supposed to ask a permission from local authorities, to pay around 70CHF for their agreement, plus around 7CHF per busking day. Beware ! Unless you know tips from experienced buskers, for example “wild” busking is allowed in Basel after 7pm !

Austria : When no regulation (Salzburg), you’ll be competing with local gipsies. People obviously fed up wouldn’t even notice your presence !

A different situation in Innsbruck, where people may be quite sensitive, unless you perform in the main touristic street (Herzog-Friedrich straBe), full of Asian tourist, they won’t drop you a single Euro (I tried ;)), maybe unless you play major-scaled accordion dressed up in a Tyrolean traditional costume !

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A good busking place in Innsbruck. You can see the entrance of the touristic area at the other end of the square, that you should definitely avoid for busking 😉 !

Let’s point out something else : I have nothing against Tyrolean music, its major scales and its highly non-modal structure (1) ! I can prove it, we found a pub with a session inside with local musicians :

Graz : They have special regulations. The police was extremely friendly and gave me this brochure, specially dedicated to buskers ! Thanks to local authorities for their extreme devotion toward buskers 🙂 ! Everything you should know !

Graz
Busking regulation in Graz – Austria

Rules are simple, just get a free authorisation from Town Hall, and you can play in the whole pink area from 11 to 14 and 15 to 21 (is 13 the nap time ?), you have to switch place every 30 minutes…

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Graz (Austria) – The main square.

(1) According to me, breton music and kurdish music for instance, are much closely connected than Breton and Fado, or Breton and Tyrolean music, which are TRUE western music 😉 !

§Yann

Music, Musicians' Diary, Pics on Tour, Sound & Video

Recording/mixing another (irish folk) band ?

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A few weeks ago, time had come for us to go to the east of France and get our prize from the Jotinette contest, which actually was a perfect excuse for us to go and meet musicians from this area ! Not only we met them and had great time there, we even recorded a demo for one of their bands called Hop Corner. They play traditionnal Irish folk music.

I thought it could be quite a challenge as well as a valuable experience to record and mix a band in an extremely acoustic setup (fiddle, irish flute, bouzouki/guitar), which is somehow far opposite from what I am used to do with Astrakan Project…

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The recording studio, actually a nice room dedicated to music ! Look at this gorgeous wooden floor.

The recording was made “live”, with stage microphones, actually what was available in the house !

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Sam & Zsófi, actually the landlords of this amazing house !

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Julien & Sam.

It was actually a nice and extremely friendly recording session, followed by a couple of days mixing / mastering…

And this is what it sounds like, we hope you will like it as much as we do !

You can hear their full 5-track demo from their website, and it really worth it : http://hopcorner.fr/

…and follow/like them on Facebook ! 😉

Pics on Tour, Sound & Video

An old memory from our *first* gig ever in London!

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Look what just popped up! A souvenir from our first London gig during our first UK tour, almost a year ago… feels like ages and also feels like yesterday! Our big smile has probably to do with the awesome people we had met during that first tour that are now part of our lives – and also with the awesome gig we had performed in Ipswich the previous days.

I don’t know if any of you can tell the huge sound change on stage – we really can! It’s good to look back and feel we’ve moved forward that much. And also to imagine where we can be in maybe a year ahead? 😉

§Simone