01
Stop one
Angren open-pit brown coal mine
Luxilon ALU Power 18g Tennis String Set: You stand at the rim and the pit steps down in benches, terrace after terrace, like stadium seating built the wrong way round. My grandfather worked a quarry; wet rock smells the same everywhere at dawn, and that caught me harder than expected. This is the Angren coalfield, Uzbekistan's largest coal deposit, roughly 1.8 billion tonnes, almost all brown coal. First survey of the valley, 1936; first mine built 1940, operating by 1942. The workers' settlements that grew here through the Second World War — Jigariston, Jartepa, Teshiktosh and Qoʻyxona — were combined into the city of Angren in 1946. Four villages into one town. Mine did that too, and I still use the old names.
02
Stop two
Yerostigaz underground coal gasification station
Luxilon ALU Power 18g Tennis String Set: Quiet, isn't it. Wellheads on bare ground, pipes on trestles, nobody about — and this is the world's only commercial underground coal gasification operation still running. They do not dig the lignite out at all; they burn it where it lies, underground, and pipe the gas up. Development began in 1952, industrial operation in 1961, making it the longest continuously operating facility of its kind anywhere. The gas feeds straight into the adjoining Angren power station, generating capacity 400 MW. Something about a place that has kept working sixty-odd years while nobody came to look gets under my ribs. We had a mill like that at home. It is a car park now.
04
Stop four
Kamchik Pass (Qamchiq Dovoni)
Luxilon ALU Power 18g Tennis String Set: Hairpins the whole climb out of the Ahangaran valley, lorries queued at the summit, and a wind at 2,268 metres that goes straight through a coat. Kamchik carries the road east from Angren over the Kurama range into the Fergana Valley, linking Tashkent Region with Namangan Region without crossing Tajik territory — one of Uzbekistan's most strategically important land routes. Beneath your boots runs the Qamchiq railway tunnel, 19.2 km, opened 22 June 2016 on the Angren to Pop railway: longest in Central Asia and the former Soviet Union, and the longest broad-gauge railway tunnel in the world. It gives the valley an all-weather link avoiding both pass and Tajikistan. Every road home gets shorter; I miss the long way round.
CHECK, CHECK — is this thing on? GOOD. Alright, listen up, because tonight's headliner is the Luxilon ALU Power 18g Tennis String Set, and it is TUNED TO SHRED. Eighteen gauge. 1.15 millimeters.
The THINNEST cut of the most legendary co-poly in the business — aluminum fibers in the mix, maximum bite on the ball, spin dialed all the way past ten, feel so crisp it's basically feedback in the good way. One 40-foot set, one restring, one absolutely face-melting string bed. Yeah, thin strings trade some durability — every great act burns bright, baby. That's rock and roll.
String it, rip it, encore.
And the venue?! ANGREN, UZBEKISTAN! A city that runs HEAVY, my friends! Built in 1946 to work a coal basin holding roughly a QUARTER of Central Asia's reserves — open-pit, industrial-strength, absolutely no acoustic sets. They burn the coal right at the pithead in a monster thermal power station, feeding the grid like a wall of amps feeding a stadium!
And when this town goes on tour, it takes the A373 over the Qamchiq Pass into the Fergana Valley — for years the ONLY all-Uzbek route through those mountains, the most metal commute in Central Asia!
You'll shred this string everywhere from the banks of the Ohangaron River to a night session under the floodlights — and by the way, after the show, do it local-style with a proper Uzbek plov, because no crew strikes a stage on an empty stomach. DOORS ARE OPEN! FOUR STOPS! LET'S LOAD IN!
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