Lena Katina Solo Project

[Katina Fan]

Originally Posted by Vicente

New status

Wicked! Just what I needed to brighten my morning!

[AshMcAuliffe]

WooHoo!!!

[kelseygirl06]

i'm excited! i hope next month big things coming!

[robbie]

Official report from Lena's trip to Los Angeles

Let me start it from the very beginning, recalling some things you do know, be charitable.
So, Lena and Olga Matveeva, who’s position is now a travel-manager and a personal assistant for Lena, arrived by plane to San Francisco late in the evening of April 19.
I came the day before, so I met them at the airport.
The weather was terrific. 25 degrees and the Californian starry heavens were in to compensate for a weariness of 16 hours flight.
Girls stayed at my place, and I hope they got the complete comfort.
The following days were filled by the preparations for Lena’s surgery, the surgery itself, and the next-day check-up.
You watched a full-scale movie about that, so I’m going ahead.
Well, on the 23d Lena was ready to travel to LA, and we moved it.
Usually I do my pan-Californian transportations by car: first, I like to drive; second, the door-to-door ride takes just half an hour more than an airplane, for those who know the rout, and you needn’t to stand in lines and wait at the airport. And, third, you’ll have your own car with you in LA, not a rented. Lena also likes traveling by car, so we hadn’t problems with our Star.

We had to drive 360 miles (about 600 km) in total. When I drive on my own, without a stop, this takes me less than 5 hours, but since girls were with me this time we stopped a couple of times, but the trip took us 5 and a half hours nevertheless.
By the way, I can’t tell about other states, but in California each and every gas station is equipped with the rather good toilets you won’t be ashamed to let even princess Lena in.
Highway-5 is the major part of your trip. Imagine a table-flat land, horizon to horizon, carrying an arrow-straight road, with practically no curves. And all this for 300 km in succession.
I use to call it the Death Valley.
Temperatures there are around 40 and more degrees in the midst of summer, and without a car one can really die there of heat stroke…
No pedestrians. No streetlights. No crossroads. No “State Auto Inspection” checkpoints or other problems. Except for the highway patrol, which you may encounter once or twice, but who doesn’t forgive you any speeding.
We entered the Northern Hollywood – part of the Los Angeles where Sven lives with his studio – at 7 PM as it was preplanned and without any adventures.

Historically, we with t.A.T.u. always stayed in top-star hotels, making our choice based on the posh-ness, caring a little about the distances between the hotel and the place we were about to work at.
Back in the days we were recording D&M and LI we used to waste an hour one-way, in traffic jams. That was wrong.
Besides, I came to conclusion that a hotel that “is hip” makes you weakened and depraved, what does clearly oppose creativity, not mentioning it does eat lots of money.
This time we decided not to fall into the same trap and stayed in a modest Holiday Inn half a mile from the studio. And we haven’t regretted it.
How happy all three of us were when the road to the studio, and especially back, when everybody was dog-tired, had been taken us 4 minutes.

As a rule of show-biz – fun first, work next… maybe.
We made a pre-party at the place of Sven and Domen, who were room-mates. To be more precise, it was in the back-yard.
Our hosts were providing barbeque, our side provided beer, girls (Lena and Olga) and me as a free supplement.
Also, there surely was Troy and Steve with his girlfriend Amanta, whom we all have met long ago.

The next day we started to work, at last.
We had only one song called “N.N.” on our “desktop”. This song was first composed and played just for fun during a jam-session last year in LA in a company of Sven, Troy, Domen, Steve and me irregardless of t.A.T.u.
(It was after that session when I realized our musicians can do much more greater things than just accompanying, though accompanying excellent; and I saw an overwhelming team-work in addition.)
I showed Lena this song while in Moscow, and she said she likes it very much and she wants to sing it.
We were going to start our experiments with this very “N.N.”, but we got the proof plans are always subject to vaporize.

Having talked about music for a couple of hours, having drunk coffee, then having listened to different kinds music and having seen number of videos we spontaneously parted into three groups:
- Lena, Sven, Troy and me occupied studio;
- Domen and Steve took the house with a small studio and drums;
- Olga was reading a book in a chaise lounge.
Due to the fact we didn’t have a big acoustically isolated room for drums and it is impossible to stay in one house with a drummer playing at full power, we resorted to miracles of high technology.
It was a special studio/training Yamaha drum set – a real big drum set with all its parts, but… its drum skins and cymbals made of rubber.
Inside this rubber there is electronic stuff that senses hits of real conventional drumsticks. It works so perfect it’s unbelievable… The hits of different strength, coming closer-farther from the center – all sound different, as these are supposed to be.
You can listen to the sounds coming from speakers or headphones, but in the room - drumsticks are hitting the rubber.
Based on the record you can’t tell this drum set from the real one, and all the fine shades of individual drummer’s skill (or mediocrity) are being transferred well.

The “N.N.” track somehow turned out to be “on the ice”, because we believed we’ve got it anyways, and it’s good to think about something else.
First, we had no sign of luck.
While Domen and Steve were sculpturing something in the house, our dullness was starting to get on our nerves.
So, we and the girls decided to break the vicious circle of our creative stall with use of a dinner in a Chinese fastfood.
Our musicians stayed at home, sadly, they promised us to keep the search on while we are away…

Boris

To be continued

[AshMcAuliffe]

thanks Robbie ... sounding interesting and informative for once from Boris!

[FiorE]

wow, Thank you Robbie, and also thanks to rensky for give us the updates everything sounds so superb, even I`m excited about, seems that finally they want to make things right and it`s so cool that lena is taking part of the creative process also.

Borya seems to be a frustrated musician, maybe he wanted to be a singer when he was younger or sth, cause he`s even taking part with the creative process and not only this time but also with tATu!, whatever it it`s I hope he respects the guys ideas.

[parasun]

that's so exciting!!! what the hell is Yulia doing lately?

[Argos]

I wanna have the rubber drum set!

[little_polar_bear]

The musicians, by the way, until this point have had no presettings, but complete freedom to write and compose songs. I still don't understand why Renski - someone who doesn't seem to have much of a musical education plays such a big part in being all around the place all the time, but of course he wants to direct where everything is aiming at and I have no clue how focussed Katina is at this point and I am sad to say this, but I don't care a lot. Maybe I will if this team is actually able to surprise me, but this is all as Renski indicated very small business.

[robbie]

I'm so lucky to be making music with my best mates! Sven, Domen & I in the studio writing & working on ideas for the new Lena album. Rock!

Source: about 1 hour ago @ http://twitter.com/TroyMaccubbin

[alanisp3]

Hey guys.... i didnt remember that i got an account here...i see that there is a few people that i know from tatu.ru forum. Hey fiore and vicente this is Diana ..nichya ...and yeah seems that nothing new of Katina's proyect.

[fanoff]

Last update in Troy's Twitter:

Another great day in the studio. Lots of cool ideas and a potential kick ass tune!

This sounds great but I'm not getting my hopes up,so that I won't be disappointed if i don't like the sound that I hear.

[MalchikGeiBrand]

Originally Posted by alanisp3

...and yeah seems that nothing new of Katina's proyect.

Welcome! They only just started so I wouldn't expect much anytime soon. They're making pretty good progress already though.
I hope we get to hear a demo. I'd be more surprised if they didn't show us one. I'm so interested to hear what the sound will be like.

I'm just glad it's no more of those cheap computerized-imitation instruments.

[Argos]

Sequel to Boris' report:

Of course, my saying “first, we had no sign of luck” means we had that luck later.

We were back in 2 hours.
Troy and Sven were at their previous positions.
“We have scribbled something over here” - said Troy and played a piece of a tune on his guitar, with Sven’s backing him on keyboard.
“So, how’s that? We are not sure, actually…” – said the new theme creators modestly.
“Wow!” – said Lena and me in one voice.
And it was the beginning…
Musicians started ad-libbing about the tune, Lena sang, and then everybody else began singing.
That singing was ragged and funny – our only goal was to find the vocal melody itself. It was somewhere very close.
An hour of total fun later we had a verse, a pre-chorus and a chorus.
Next day we thought up the concept of the meaning, the lyrics and the bridge.
Time has come to get demo-vocals recorded.
It was something special, like nothing on earth and at the same time like would-be hit a-la mainstream, with stylish beat and classical Los Angeles flavor of bridge vocals.
For the following three or four days (I don’t recall exactly) we polished our track, finding new features.
For example, there is a moment when we can hear a… brass wind instrument.

Neither Lena, nor musicians, nor me had or have an objective of doing mainstream music on the principle of “all for sale” (please, don’t mock me with Insider’s phrase “all sails up for soul, no soul down for sale”; Lena’s music is being made for you, fans, as well as for wide audience, but it doesn’t mean it is pocket-bound, not soul-bound). This new song – let’s conveniently call it “I.S.” – may be formally assorted as pop-mainstream, with great reserve, but at the same time that is not exactly it. Only later on, when we finished working on the next thing, it became clear what “the Lena’s style” is and why “I.S.” is truly Lena’s song.

While we were having fun with “I.S.” (well, actually we worked, but according to feelings of everyone involved it was real fun) Domen and Steve composed another song – “So not cool”. If one does try to describe its style this would be close to rock-ballad with monumental sound and mystic contents. Bridge in this song is sung by Steve himself.

Concerning “N.N.”, that I mentioned after telling all about the nature and the weather, Lena recorded chorus and the bridge to this rock song with a hit potential. Verses lack lyrics by now, and the melody requires more work.

Our studio session lasted 11 days without any weekend breaks, fuelled by the complete universal inspiration. Don’t know about your mind, but to my humble one it is a rather good speed – to make two and a half songs in the given time, two of which were done totally from scratch. That means Lena has got a big chance of making you happy with her album ready by the end of the year. Especially pleasing is the fact that all denoted vocals are already recorded in clean copy.

I wish to stress the fact about Lena’s vocals: guys, you haven’t heard Lena like this ever, believe me.
(it is not about new Lena being better or worse than previous Lena, it is about absolutely new Lena, you’ll see…)

I have a fierce desire to give these songs for you to listen right now, but I’m sure you understand it’s not possible.
It’s a pity the loyal fans community does not reside at some remote resort on Mars or similar, without a comm link to Earth’s internet…

This is, actually, it.
On the May 4 we left LA to go back to Northern California.
Lena visited doctor for her eyes check-up – everything was fine.
She had a rest for the next three days, had a bit of sunbathing, and on the 8-th she and Olga flew to Moscow to participate in Eurovision. If it wasn’t about Eurovision, we would continue our work…
Now Lena comes back to California on June 27, and she’s going to stay there for much longer. We do hope to make everything. At least as a demo version.



Boris

Thanks to Jam One at tatu.ru for posting!

[mulder]

It's early days, but this is looking good. I'm glad to see they're not afraid of using different musical styles or of trying to write a hit single

I wish to stress the fact about Lena’s vocals: guys, you haven’t heard Lena like this ever, believe me.
(it is not about new Lena being better or worse than previous Lena, it is about absolutely new Lena, you’ll see…)

Now that has definitely got my interest - could she be singing in a lower register to get more power to her vocals?

I have a fierce desire to give these songs for you to listen right now, but I’m sure you understand it’s not possible.

Oh, go on Boris, give in to your desires

[SoporAeternus]

great!

everything look perfect!

Lena will rock! im sure about it

[AshMcAuliffe]

*Ash does a crazy little dance*

[kelseygirl06]

I'M PRETTY EFFING EXCITED KEEP UP THE WORK LENA,BORIS AND CO!

little_polar_bear: Kelsey, I don't want to repeat myself another time. Please, don't use caps all the time. It is totally unnecessary. Thanks.

[Endri]

Rock!

[manatsu103]

Ohhhhh! I'm excited.