Produced by cultural arts organisation Music Worldwide, January 2024 saw us begin a residency with the prestigious Norwich School, situated in the city centre right next to Norwich Cathedral.  Working with their music students on a performance of Orchestra of Samples, we worked with a choir of 15 students, 6 soloists and two percussionists – all extremely talented with some already quite proficient as musicians and about to enroll in dedicated music colleges.

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October 2022 and we were in Lisbon, Portugal, at the huge music industry conference WOMEX (abbreviation of World Music Expo), an event that focuses on world music, with talks, showcases and evening concerts.  While there we also took the opportunity to record musicians, some being members of Portuguese 10-piece band Criatura, particularly those playing traditional instruments, such as adufe drums, bagpipes and fado guitar.

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Since launching in 2014, Sheffield based Talking Gigs have featured an incredible line-up of performers including Bassekou Kouyate, Robyn Hitchcock, Tinariwen, Sam Lee, Emmanuel Jal and many others.  Supported by Songlines magazine, and half interview / talk show and half concert and it’s an innovative format that gives audiences a real close-up insight into an artist’s work, life and culture. More than just an interview, artists perform particular songs in the first half, discussing them with the interviewer, before performing a full concert in the second half.

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While in India, for our performance of Orchestra of Samples in Pondicherry, we were introduced to the wonderful composer and mandolin master Uppalapu Rajesh, known as U Rajesh. Renowned for his innovative take on Carnatic Indian classical music, Rajesh feels musical techniques come after savouring the music, saying audiences should use their heart to enjoy music first.

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Having recorded a number of times in India for Orchestra of Samples and with the project being a UK-French venture, in early April 2022 we were invited to performed the show in India at the French Rendez-Vous Festival in the coastal city of Puducherry, organised by the French Institute of India and international cultural organisation Les Francophonies.

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The current issue of Future Music Magazine features a three page article about us and our 2017 Orchestra of Samples album in their ‘Classic Albums’ section.  Each issue of the magazine focuses on an album they see as breaking the mould, doing something innovative, making its mark and so on; it was a real honour to have been asked.  As well as interviewing us, they asked us to write about each track on the album, and how that track came about.

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As part of our collaboration with Indonesian artist Kuntari for the British Council’s Connections Through Culture programme, we’ve now released two new Orchestra of Samples tracks, both sampling field recordings made in Indonesia and elsewhere.  Our two new tracks, Somewhere Else and 4 Times, are part of the release called Pararatronic, together with two tracks from Kuntari and released by Dutch label Audiomaze.

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As pandemic restrictions ease in the UK and more live events begin to happen again, it felt fantastic to be back on the road for our first gig of 2022, having already had a gig cancelled in early January in France!  We headed to Ipswich, in the east of the UK, to perform at The New Wolsey Theatre, who – as part of their opening season – hosted a few nights of music performances, including a jazz night from the Ronnie Scott’s All Stars and from ourselves with Orchestra of Samples.

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Originally from Sri Lanka and blind from birth, percussionist Ghow Ratnarajah is an expert with mridangam and kanjira drums – the primary rhythmic accompaniment in Carnatic music ensembles – he also sings in both Tamil and occasionally Hindi.  We’ve both performed and worked with Ghow a number of times, including on shows in the UK and in India, and last year on our documentary project Our Journeys for the London Borough of Culture 2020, so it was great to finally recorded him for Orchestra of Samples.

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With Covid restrictions in the UK easing more and more, we headed north to the city of Manchester for our first trip outside London since the pandemic began! Just east of the city, in the foothills of the Pennines is the small town of Ashton-Under-Lyne, where we were recording Sufi singer/songwriter, musician and peace activist Sarah Yaseen.

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Originally from Italy and now living in the UK, Alex Akal is an experimental musician who connects traditional instruments with contemporary music. A multi-instrumentalist with a taste for progressive and psychedelic rock, he blends instruments and sounds from around the world, creating his own unique style of music. As well as singing, he plays didgeridoo, drums, electric guitar, bass guitar, fujara (a Slovak flute), dan moi (a Vietnamese mouth harp) and both Native American flute and dvojnice (a flute played in many parts of the Balkans); as it happens, we previously recorded dvojnice in Croatia and then very recently a fujara too, with its beautiful deep bassy sound.

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