Orchestra of Samples by Addictive TV
Extra post today because this is extra special. Five years and more in the making. Addictive TV put hundreds of musicians through the blender on Orchestra of Samples to produce one of the best and most inventive electronic albums you’re going to hear this year. Available on vinyl (going fast) and CD, as well as download.
Addictive TV is Mark Vidler of sainted Go Home Productions fame (shame he’s a Gooner), and Graham Daniels. The album was produced from a range of samples collected from musicians they met on their extensive travels over the past five years. Less an orchestra of samples than a world of samples. But this is no careless scrapbook. If you didn’t know the genesis you wouldn’t realise. The tracks all have an individual and collective coherence.
Hangman conflates what sounds like gamelans with wails of lost love loneliness. Unity Through Music takes Eastern strings and places them in a backdrop of military beats and a Lahnden vocal.
Kora Borealis takes the West African lute and gives it an almost C&W feel. All very Transglobal Underground, for those with long memories. Beachcoma has washes of waves, sitar and avoids the yoga mat with a lovely vocal (Lætitia Sadier?).
The American turns out sadly not to be a cover of the Simple Minds classic but an almost Americana rock track undercut by piano. Sitar Hero does what you’d expect with the sitar but adds some Berlin electronics and some UK whooshing.
Bish bosh, job done. Good work fellas.
Blurb: Take hundreds of musicians from more than 25 different countries around the world, all recorded over a period of 5 years. Imagine that the musicians have never met or recorded together but converge in compositions of unique fusions, crossing cultures and styles. This is what Addictive TV (Graham Daniels and Mark Vidler aka mash-up king Go Home Productions) have created with their Orchestra of Samples venture and their debut album, released this spring.
As Addictive TV, Daniels and Vidler have been at the forefront of audio and video mashups and AV shows for nearly two decades, and whilst touring the world in recent years, Orchestra of Samples became a vital part of their travels. “Orchestra of Samples is a journey into musical serendipity,” explains Daniels “Taking extra equipment to nearly every gig, we recorded and filmed hundreds of musicians from Brazil to Senegal, China to Kazakhstan, across Europe and even in Egypt during the Arab Spring. From these, we cut up thousands of samples to create new music, with the samples dictating the direction in the studio, recontextualising musicians as if they were playing together when in fact they all improvised seperately and none of them ever met!”
Within the recordings, Daniels and Vidler have documented some unusual and localised instruments. The project has also attracted some top musicians in their field including sitar master Baluji Shrivastav OBE and Grammy-nominated Brazilian guitarist Mazinho Quevedo as well as guest vocalists including Stereolab’s Lætitia Sadier and French rappers Milk Coffee & Sugar.
It was important that the project wasn’t created from anonymous downloaded samples; the duo met, recorded and got to know every artist involved, working with, and in many cases becoming friends with, many people during the journey.
Orchestra Of Samples is released on CD, LP and digitally on 2nd June 2017. Addictive TV will be touring the project during 2017 including a 12-date UK tour starting in May.
ACID TED 