September 25, 2009 Winchester Geese – Shrine to the Outcast Dead.
After our last concert in London I stayed for a week more in London. While I was on the train from Bermondsey to London Bridge, I was pointed to the left by my host and friend, Llywelyn. It was a regular building site grey and ugly, nothing special.
He said that’s the Crossbones Graveyard where the Winchester Geese were burried. I looked a bit puzzled, and wondered, as it looked nothing like a burial site.
As it turns out, the place was used to buried the outlaws, people that could not be burried into consecrated ground from an unknown time in the Middle Ages. Being outcase, prostitutes were burried here too, ones that were apparently licensed by the Bishop of Winchester. Church always knew what business was. Then, in 1853 it was closed down “completely overcharged with dead,’ and further burials were deemed “inconsistent with a due regard for the public health and public decency.” And then in 1883 they sold it as a building site, used it as a fairground and now, now it is nothing. Locals are trying to get a permanent memorial for the 15000 people still lying underground. Right now they have a plaque and the gate is full of ribbons and notes of people of goodwill.
This whole story touched me very deeply. Partly because, as you know, for a very brief period of my life I used to be the part of the clergy, partly, well. Just because.
When I got home, I got a new piece of music by our harpist, Feri, and the lyrics I wrote, well it’s about the Winchester Geese. It’ll be interesting to see whether this song will ever be used or it will be burried in the Crossbones, too.
RIP The Outcast dead.
(All quotes are from Wikipedia, pictures are by myself)
no comments.September 19, 2009 Toothy Trees
So. We are apparently being supported by the Tooth Fairy.
In less than a month, Havasi had one of his wisdom teeth out, Biborka (I know, she is not a band member, but she almost is) had one out and today I had two. So I win anyway.
The good thing is that it was a fairly easy experience for all three of us. What next? 
as a souvenir, here are my teeth:
September 11, 2009 Memories revisited
Remember the teddybear in the ‘Alfred’s Lovesong’ video?
Well, now that our flat has become bigger, I took it from our parents’ place and now it lives with us finally. And. My older cat seems to have fallen for it. Now the teddy gets a regular massage and is being slept with on a daily basis.
no comments.May 6, 2009 We are back!
# posted by Kristof in other, songs
We are back!
So. We are back. I mean we have not been properly away, but now we are full on. We have concerts and stuff. And we have new songs! Some of them we are already playing live, some of them we are furiously working on.
Altogether we have 6 new songs right now, 2 of which did not fit on the last album but we love them, 4 brand new ones. They apparently have a lot more drama and quiet and loud dancing than our previous album. Hopefully we are soon going to call this an album too.
Until then, please come and see us live and encourage our new songs with your cheering. New songs are as shy on the stage as a new artist can be.
no comments.December 15, 2008 No longer a trio.
so now you got scared. ha. 
unless you were there at our london concert you are not aware yet, but we now officially have a fourth member, and it is no other than
Andor Gabor on drums and percussion. TARAAAAAA!
You may have heard him playing on our album or our concerts in 2008.
no comments.November 22, 2008 Pete Paphides’ visit to Budapest
having the music journalist of the times flying over to your town just for your sake, is … well, both honouring and unnerving. you imagine someone coming over with the look of your most dreaded teacher on his face, asking questions you never know where he intends to go to with, impossible to please with any answers.
and then of course you realise that this is another fucking stereotype. i already started to realise it when pete paphides answered my mail telling him we are going to pick him up at the airport saying “it is very good of us”. humility. i have a thing for people with humility.
i did a bit of googling on him, read a couple of articles he’d written to be prepared. i still cannot cope with the idea of people meeting me to speak about me and me not knowing anything about him. cyprus, UK, chip-shop, time-out, the times.
luckily, it was a wonderful day. one of those beautiful late autumn days. the one budapest looks the best in. so we did a bit of walking on andrassy ut, told him a bit about budapest, and he wondered how i knew so much about town. i thought it was just basic knowledge you learn at school? probably when you live in a smaller european capital, more attention is paid to the history of your town. less easy to just pass by. also, with an audience as pete, it is very easy to speak about what you find interesting, he was intrigued by every single thing i said.
then over the lunch we had the interview. havasi joined us and it was a most pleasant lunch (as well as i had the most gorgeous baked pumpkin with blue-cheese and caramelised nuts!) and then we crossed the chain bridge and the legend begun.
i did something i hadn’t since late childhood…
we sat on the funiculaire (siklo) and went up to the castle. now that gave me shivers. i got nearly more excited than pete was, and i can tell you he was excited quite a bit! moving above the town looking down, why do i never do this?
the castle was quiet and all lit in afternoon wintery sun. why don’t i come here more often? a lot more often? my grandmother used to live here. we came here every second sunday to have lunch. if we were well-behaved, we were taken to ruszwurm for ice-cream.
pete was well-behaved (he called home to account on his well being twice, an exemplary family man, despite claiming to his wife to be in prague once in front of the whole cake-shop, making it up with being most honestly embarrassed for it) so i took him there for cakes. too cold for ice-cream. having cakes we admitted to each other our guilty pleasures of loving euro-disco and showed each other tracks on each other’s ipods. geeky. lovely. we agreed that nina persson was still far too underrated for her lyrical skills.
and then there was a plane to catch. so we rode the bus down back to the pest side, walked around the synagogue, sat in the car.
on our way to the airport i showed him some more songs i believed he should hear, while he was a bit worried (not without a reason, although, i do think, pete, that you worry too much as the road to the airport was closed for a foreign commitee. but the commitee passed us and we were let go. we were there on time. as i promised we would, see?
what could i say to sum it up. if you want to re-discover your own city, go back to the nice bits of your childhood, well… make pete visit you
no comments.November 17, 2008 November
# posted by Kristof in other, performances, recording
have you ever heard November by Azure Ray? It’s so beautiful.
This autumn is quite eventful for us. First of all, we had a visit from Pete Paphides from The Times, who made a feature on us which will appear later this month. It was a lovely day, and if you spot it in The Times, come here quickly, because you will see my own impressions on meeting him giving you the other side of the visit.
Then, we are also preparing for our concert in The Luminaire. The setlist will be more or less the same as the one we played in Budapest early October, but some songs will be changed.
And funnily, we started writing new songs, we already have some 6-7 tracks. A new album? Maybe. We’ll see. For now, it is for the sake of creativity only.
And how are you?
no comments.November 3, 2008 the accent
since the third reviewer (2 hungarian – 1 uk: a proportion to think about) mentions my accent in the reviews, i thought i would have a think about it.
obviously, i do have an accent. i do not think it is as strong as hungarian reviewers would like to hear it, but still, it is there.
once upon a time, at the university i thought obtaining the perfect recieved pronunciation would be necessary for a happy life and on. but the more i think about it… is it really that important?
using grammar right, not writing lyrics that would rape the language is. but isn’t the accent (continental, northern-english, scottish, american, indian, whatever) part of our performing identity? i mean, as long as the singer is understandable, i think it is very important not to assimilate our language usage to the anglo-saxon world 100%. we sing in english, yes we do. we do so mainly because we are signed to a UK label. i am sure if we had a hungary only contract the situation would be different.
and i do not even think that the perfect UK or US accent would be a necessity even (if we wanted) to become a star. look at greta garbo and her famous “ahy vant too be alooan”. and no, we are not aiming to be stars. we have been discovered by our label for what we are, and what we are is a strong identity involving us not being british. or american. and the accent is part of me.
besides. as long as it disturbs the know-it-all reviewer of quart.hu and not the guardian or the independent, do we really have to give a fuck.
no comments.October 28, 2008 enjoy the silence
i spent a wonderful week in london. it’s been long i experienced such a wonderful autumn weather. i love autumn. all those leaves sweeping around london’s streets. i did a lot of touristic stuff, despite having been in london a million times, i only got round to seeing the westminster abbey, st paul’s or the british museum only now. i have been up on my feet so much they ached at the end. and you know what? i should do it more often. i have been back at work for two days now, and i still feel energetic, happy and at peace with the world.
looking forward to the concert in london, too. i hope many of you will come.
oh, and please take time to look at the art project we are running connected to the album:
Chemically Happy (Is The New Sad) art project.
it is based on free associations of artists that are our friends. i feel it is something very fruitful and positive we have created together there.
no comments.October 8, 2008 free associations
there was this game we used to play when i was a child, you said a word, i said the first thing that came into my mind. i have met many great artists while recording this album. some were painters, some writers, some photographers. wanting to connect, i asked them to creat a piece of art on their own field taking one of the songs on the album and associating freely to it. this is what you see here. welcome.
Click here to access the art project.
no comments. older entries