S*T*U*F*F* Reloaded

It was pretty much perfect. Getting out of the minibus to catch the midnight train to St. Petersburg, there was some Russian brass band music playing at the station in Moscow. The train is straight from a movie scene - Earl (Air drummer) and I are sharing a compartment at the end of a long corridor, and its pretty decent, to tell you the truth. When we set off, it will be a wobbly wander down to the bar carriage for a £10 glass of wine, I’m sure… but it certainly beats the hell out of taking an Aeroflot flight tomorrow.

We’ve just been in Moscow, which was truly bizarre, and a complete mess. Beautiful at times, clogged with traffic and pollution at others. Dripping with extraordinary wealth, crawling with dreadful poverty… a true city of paradox. I’m not convinced that I would be champing at the bit to come back in a hurry, but its certainly been fun - the gig in particular was great, mostly due to an audience who were gagging for the music. The climax to “La Femme d’Argent” got quite out of control; both JB and myself had to dig deep into the chaos of our MS-20 and SH101 synths respectively to find new levels of mayhem as Nico and Earl revved the Air engines to their limits. I have to recommend a shot of “Russian Standard” between the end of the main set and the encore for any artist… it certainly does the trick.

I’ve been scanning signs and every piece of written material I could to try and decipher the cyrillic alphabet, with some success… it doesn’t look completely alien anymore, even after the one day we’ve been here. PECTOPAH. That’s “Restaurant”. You should see what “George Michael” looks like.

I went to the market on “Arbat” today to buy a “matrioshka” for Luka - a Russian nesting doll. I haggled for one with 15 pieces, and its lovely. I wanted the classic version with a round face, and that’s exactly what I got, for a quarter of the asking price - by the time I left, the girl I bought it from had such a sour face on her that you would have thought I’d just thrown a bucket of manure over her granny - always the sign of a good haggle. Anyway, I hope he likes it - I remember playing with one at my grandparents’ house when I was little and I used to love it.

So now St. Petersburg after the overnight train journey - it is as beautiful as we’d all dreamed it would be, and that’s just based on the drive from the station to the hotel. The big rendezvous is at midday, when we will venture out together for an exploration, and when more bewildered Russians will think that Earl is Lenny Kravitz and gather round him for photographs.