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.
Since last month, September 2022, world music website Rhythm Passport have begun running Arsenal of Sounds – a new monthly night at southeast London venue Woolwich Works in Woolwich Arsenal.
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.
May 2022 wrapped up a year of events for Plugged, the music initiative set-up by Addictive TV’s Francoise Lamy and east London producer Rob Parton, and for the last event a night of global beats and ethno-grooves was staged at east London venue the Walthamstow Trades Hall.
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.
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.
November saw us complete our Arts Council England funding, which has enabled us this year to record many more musicians, hold workshops and release 3 tracks, Return of Django, Ribab Jam and Dr Junkenstein.
June 2020 and we were to perform Orchestra of Samples at UNESCO’s headquarters in Paris for the launch of their new magazine Humanities Arts and Society, the event was unfortunately cancelled due to the pandemic.
November 2018 and our UK tour is finished! The almost year-long set of dates, kindly supported by Arts Council England, took us all over the country and after the summer, the autumn tour dates took in the likes of Cambridge, Liverpool and Belfast amongst others, with interviews on Sue Marchant’s BBC Cambridgeshire show (main photo at the top) and you can listen to her interview above, but the highlight of interviews was being grilled on BBC News (below) on BBC Music Day in late September where we were given the HARDtalk treatment by presenter Stephen Sackur, who’s more used to interviewing heads of state and difficult politicians!
It’s the summer of the long heatwave! The last 2018 UK tour gigs before the summer break saw us perform Orchestra of Samples in the UK towns of Milton Keynes at the IF: Milton Keynes International Festival with Dame Evelyn Glennie, in Horsham where 2018 BBC Young Musician of the Year finalist Toril Azzalini-Machecler joined us and in Harwich at the Harwich Festival of the Arts, performing in one of the oldest cinemas in the world, the beautiful Electric Palace built in 1911 (we also happen to be the last artists to perform there, as it’s now undergoing a huge restoration).
With a great start to our 2018 UK tour, the first date in London at Splice Festival was chosen as Pick of the Week by the Metro Newspaper (photo above). Then to top it off, a journalist from Sweden’s Release Magazine was there reviewing the whole festival and gave us this glowing quote…!
We’ve just performed Orchestra of Samples in Paris at the world famous Musée du Quai Branly, the prestigious museum of world cultures by the Eiffel Tower! The night was part of their weekend L’Afrique des Routes (Africa on the Road), closing the museum’s year long Africa exhibition.
Our final date at Musicport festival 2017 ends our UK tour! We took Orchestra of Samples up and down the United Kingdom, from Wiltshire to Whitby, via London, Sheffield, Hull, Norwich and many other towns and cities.
We were joined on our performances by both guest and regular musicians, including fretless guitar virtuoso Alejandro de Valera…
We were invited on ‘A WORLD IN LONDON’ this week, the show presented by DJ Ritu on SOAS Radio. The online radio station is based at the School of Oriental and African Studies, part of the University of London and produces a variety of programmes, all with a focus on Africa, Asia and the Middle East. Here’s the interview below, about 30 minutes into the show, Mark unfortunately couldn’t make this one…
One of Spanish radio’s most listened to electronic music shows Atmósfera on Spain’s Radio 3, presented by Elena Gómez, invited Addictive TV to present Orchestra of Samples to it’s listeners. We were asked to record links introducing tracks from the album, which they then cut together. The broadcast date was 24th September 2017.
WOMAD 2017 was simply fantastic! We performed on the Bowers & Wilkins stage to a wonderful capacity crowd and even did a cheeky encore cutting up and remixing Seu Jorge who was playing the main stage.
While there we were interviewed on Radio WOMAD 87.7FM, interview below alongside tracks from the album. Big thanks to the WOMAD press team. Tracks from Orchestra of Samples played: Hangman, Beachcoma and Rapscallion.
Summer 2017 and we’re halfway through the Orchestra of Samples tour! So time to round up some of the interviews and album reviews over recent weeks. Having kicked-off the tour in Hull as part of Hull – City of Culture 2017, here’s us on local BBC radio making fools of ourselves…
August 2017’s UK issue of DJ Magazine is now out, featuring a two-page interview with Addictive TV about Orchestra of Samples… they asked us questions not many others have before! Scanned PDF of the article is below…
“The most impressive aspect of this project is that the duo strictly refused to alter any of the recordings. This means no time stretching or pitch alteration” – SONGLINES. June 2017’s issue of Songlines magazine featured a great article about us and Orchestra of Samples in their ‘introducing section’ – click here to read a scanned PDF of the article (it’ll open in another window), but considering where you’re actually reading this, then the following is possibly the best quote…
“a unique technology-driven audio-visual experience” Factor Magazine. The rather cool technology website Factor Magazine just did an interview with us about Orchestra of Samples ahead of the tour. Love the opening quote: “Duo Addictive TV begin touring their Orchestra of Samples project this week, 200 musicians from around the world will be joining them. But thanks to sophisticated technology
Awesome awesome night! Always great to play on home turf, not just the UK but the good old East End of London! Guesting with us were members of afrobeat/world/jazz/funk band Yaaba Funk – both percussionists Clive Wales and Paul Brett and the superb trumpet player Byron Wallen, often cited as one of the best trumpeters in the World.
Well, what a fantastc review from Cultured Vultures! Click here to go to the article… but a few choice extracts below…
“I’ve been to a lot of live events and seen and heard some fairly unique things… Nothing could prepare me for Orchestra of Samples though.”
Hello Rome…! Performed Orchestra of Samples at the Romaeuropa Festival last night. Amazing night performing the show with the guys from Frank Sent Us. Great piece in the Italian Corriere della Sera newpaper this morning!
Hola España! It’s the third time we’ve been asked back to perform at the Abycine Film Festival in Albacete in Spain, and it’s always such a fantastic event! This time we performed Orchestra of Samples at the gala opening night of the festival, at the spectactular Teatro Circo de Albacete – one of only six existing 19th Century theatres of its kind left in the world. It’s the second time we’ve performed the project in Spain and French guitarist Alejandro de Valera once again joined us on stage. Was also great to see the peice in the local paper the following morning over breakfast…!
