Additive TV have travelled the world recording and sampling musicians and then have brought it all together in a digital world of amazing and unique musical performance.
On stage we have founder Graham Daniels surrounded by plenty of sample boards, electronic devices, wires and a laptop as well as some hand percussion instruments. We also have fretless guitar virtuoso Alejandro de Valera, percussionist Michael ‘Fordey’ Ford and Czech clarinettist František Holčík.
Over 200 musicians were used to record the Orchestra of Samples album and it was played in full – of course there couldn’t have been 200 global musicians on stage! The rest of the musicians are on the big screen, and this is where it gets so interesting. The music is created from all the samples recorded across the world and when their ‘piece’ is used in the music the video of them is on the screen – it was lovely to be able to see who created that particular sound.
With that many musicians from around the world, we got to see and hear many, many instruments and I have to say many I’ve not even seen or heard of before, such as an oud, a gombri, a kayamb, and even a qraqeb. There was also a few more ‘unique’ instruments we saw being experimented with – a bike wheel and I’m sure I saw an exhaust unit being tapped on.
Voices were also used in the samples, of course the voice is also an instrument.
The music which was created from all these sounds was amazingly wonderful and exceptionally clever. There was so much depth to each track as the instruments were integrated into the overall sound – having the video on screen added to the experience.
The amount of time and effort to put this all together is unfathomable – this is a lot of work, however you can see the passion from both all the musicians but also Graham’s vision of bringing all these sounds together. The most incredible thing about this is that all the musicians were asked to improvise on their recordings – there was no set ‘song’ for them to perform.
It was a genuine delight to be able to listen to such unique good music and an applause to The New Wolsey for adding this to their programme.