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 with 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 fast food.

Our musicians stayed at home, sadly, they promised us to keep the search on while we are away…

Boris

To be continued