About the violin sounds….

In late 2000 I was in Prague with the Infernal Noise Brigade to block the meeting of the World Bank/ IMF.

From Prague I aimed for Istanbul, by train with with many stops along the way. First a visit with friends in Budapest, detoxing from the tear-gas by spending full days in the bath houses like Szechenyi Furdo, floating around with wrinkled geriatrics.

I missed my onward train to Bucarest (Romania) because I forgot to record the door noise of the street trolleys, and ran out of the station at the last minute to record a metro door buzzer (listen).

I ended up on regional train was supposed to connect to another at some industrial town in Romania. When I arrived at midnight in the change station there were no more trains leaving that night. The station was grim, flickering flourescent tubes lit up people piles in heaps trying to sleep. A pack of rabid glue sniffing kids eyed me curiously, but looked to stoned to take advantage of the opportunity. A pair of stylish Romani (gypsy) men strode about wearing pinstriped zoot suits in bold colors, one purple and one yellow, and of course the requisite fedoras and mustaches.
There was an information window, basically a hole in the concrete. The attendant pulled his blind in my face, refusing to answer any questions, but I could hear in his office a tinny radio playing some music.
A piece of the wall had a hand-painted map of the city, flaked and soiled, but possible to see that there was another station on the other side of the town. Outside there was a streetcar. Since i didn’t have any Romanian money i entered without paying and rode it until seeing what looked like another train station. This station looked more like a triage, at least a hundred people sleeping next to their bundles of belongings.

Eventually the connecting train showed up, a slow local that had been robbed of all it’s light bulbs. It rumbled along in the blackness towards Sibiu where I tried to visit (unsuccessfully) the self-appointed King of the Gypsies. In Sibui I heard the same music, and managed to find a copy of the album. Since I don’t feel like being sued I won’t name the artist, although she is long dead.

The violin stabs in Singularities are sampled from about 5 seconds of the intro of a song from this record, a dozen notes which were sliced out, pitch-modified, bit reduced, and triggered using a mobile fone’s touch screen as a midi controller.

As for the rhythm, it’s a lost cousin of dem bow. And the cello, it was played with drum sticks.