What's new

So, I was hoping that Ilya would write about the band's trip to Kharkov for "Salsa contra crisis", but I think he's just so swamped with everything else, we're going to have to wait a little bit for the stories.

I got this pic emailed to me from Dennis Adu (who is behind the camera). Kills me that I'm not in it. :P Oh well, I guess I'll just have to keep on working here to get the album out and done, and that's all I can do for now. Excited to soon be a part of this picture again in June in Sweden, though.

I updated our myspace, also, with some of the other pictures I got from Dennis from the Kharkov thing, and a couple of other minor changes, including posting up a picture of Arseniy, our bongocero (pictured here in the blue sweatshirt). He's young, but he's been playing with us more and more regularly, and he's on 5/10 tracks of the recording, so hopefully he'll become a more permanent member with some time and practising.

I just received our liner notes from yet another of our salsa idols from the clasica era. I'm still going to keep his identity a secret until closer to the album release date, but we're thrilled that he liked the music as much as he did, and his words will put the cherry on top of our album.

Other than that, the only news on my end is that yesterday I bought another guiro and pandereta in Paris. Note to others: LP guiros (and others, probably) are a lot cheaper in Paris than in Ukraine or Canada. In fact, I went to this great store called La Baguetterie on Victor Masse street in Paris, it has TONS of percussion. Love Paris. People that are around here might want to check it out. (They actually had like 15 different kinds of guiros, way more than other places I've been to.)

Besides that, we'll just have to be patient for the three pigeons story... ?

Lovin' MySpace

Hey, we got more comments from people we really admire on our myspace. Orestes Vilato (timbalero) and Maximo Rodriguez (bass player). Some great comments... we're lovin' the MySpace thing. Really recommend it. Great way to connect with people.

In other news, these French CD replicators are proving a bit difficult... and slow. I went on an American website yesterday and was immediately contacted by customer service people that were SO NICE and efficient. Gotta love American customer service. When we finally sign a contract with a replicator, I'll post it on here so everyone can find out which one is the most efficient to avoid all the hassles we have...

Ilya shows up for the first time

Bonsoir, ladies and gentlemen!
My name is Ilya Yeresko and I don't speak any French, I just didn't know how to start the thing. I was mentioned here in the blog couple of times, I am the bandleader and pianist of DisLOCAdos. Hope everybody enjoys the blog as well as I do. And I'll try to be less silly in the future or not silly at all.
I'm being very busy these days with all stuff like mixing the songs, rehearsing 19 songs, preparing a new band member for the big concert, practicing piano, doing interview (see below) etc. Basically doing everything to get the band ready to play the greatest two concerts which will be in Sweden June 5 and 6. I love my life now: 5 rehearsals/2 shows every week, I've gotta wake up every morning at 6 a.m. to be able to do all the work I need to do - and I think it's beautiful! Escape from the chaos.. or whatever!
This week April 25, we're going to Kharkov which is on the East of Ukraine. That will open our small Ukraine tour that we called "Salsa Against The Crisis". We're doing it together with our friends salsa dance school "El Talisman" and two another salsa schools. There gonna be a salsa dance competition (where I (together with another band member Sasha who actually knows how to dance salsa) am gonna be one of the judges) and then then the concert of DisLOCAdos. We would like everybody to come visit the concert, it's for sure gonna be danceable and full of energy!
On my next post I will tell everybody about the new adventures of DisLOCAdos on the way to Kharkov and back, which will contain the bus story, the train story, the sound engineer story, the three pigeons, a bum and a slice of bread story, and many other interesting facts that haven't even slightly happened yet or will never ever happen. So stay with the blog.
Thank you everybody who supports the band and especially the ones that support the blog and write comments! ;) Thank you, Karolina, for starting this thing and for the inspiration!
Au revoir!

Cool interview, and fun with Google Translate

So, Ilya got interviewed this week by uajazz.com, a pretty popular jazz portal of Ukraine (it seems to me the most popular, if I'm not mistaken). It's a pretty long interview, which is very cool for us.

Check it out here.

However, the article is in Russian. Now, normally, when things are written in Russian about us, I can understand. (Like the last article that was done on us, also for the same online magazine)

This time, however, I find it a little harder to understand. So, since I have many other things to get to today, I decided to give my brain a bit of a break and go to Google Translate and see what happens.

It reads like a hilarious ESL speaker. So funny. (Also notice that Ilya's name comes out 3 or 4 different ways throughout the article: Ilya, Elias, Elijah...)

Check it out.

CD production on its way...

It seems Ilya loves the finals for the cover, as does Lesya (our other lead singer). Awesome. Thanks to Jessie Kawata and Juan David Quinones for the design.

Today I got a quote for the production of our CDs. Not as scary as it could be.

Also got the final mixes to our last two songs: Cancion de los muertos and La palapa. They sound awesome. I especially love how CDLM came out!

( When they're ready, you can check them out on our myspace, or see the current songs we have up there at www.myspace.com/dislocados )

Ilya has been super busy these past few days and it doesn't look like it's going to let up any time soon. Wondering what he's up to...
KP

Blog Launch before Album Launch

So, I just created this blog in order to document the launch of our ambitious yet humble salsa band from Ukraine. It's been a long project, the band was playing together in some form since November 2005, but we really got together to launch the band one year later and start working on the first recordings of original hard salsa music the former Soviet Union has ever seen.

Now we've recorded all of the tracks and have the last ones almost mixed. We're trying our best to get this album out in the next couple of weeks, but it will be tricky. We want to have them for this salsa festival we're doing in Sweden in June. The plan is a bilateral launch - in Kyiv, Ukraine and in Fontainebleau/Paris, France.

Perhaps I should introduce myself first. This blog is for me (Karolina, one of two lead singers, lyricist and international management) and Ilya (musical director, pianist) to document our activities, triumphs, frustrations, etc. It's an experimental project, but it might be interesting to get going, and see what the two of us are doing on two different sides of Europe to get this project off the ground.

I'm in Fontainebleau, France studying for another two and a half months and am separated from my band of ten who are practicing and performing all the time. Trying to rehearse on my own to keep my voice solid by the time June comes around.

Today I just received the finals of the cover design. They're freaking beautiful, I love them, and I'm so grateful to our graphic designers for working so hard on them. Sent them off to Ilya for final comments, etc...

I think Ilya's in the studio today. I hope he posts how it all went...