Secret Archives of the Vatican

Downloads up as album sales drop

vincemillett — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 13:49:57 +0000

According to the BBC, UK album sales continued to decline in 2009 although downloads were up.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/8444854.stm

Statistics released by trade body the BPI showed overall album sales dropped by 3.5% in 2009 to 128.9 million, the fifth year in a row they have fallen. The fall was partly offset by a 56.1% rise in album downloads to 16.1 million, now accounting for one in eight sold.

What amazes me is that they continue to be surprised by this and continue to whine about it. The way people access and use music has changed but they still won’t accept this. They still won’t adapt to the fact that the new music economy will not have the massively overinflated profit harvest that the industry has reaped for the last 40 years.

Singles sales increased by 32.7% to a record 152 million during 2009, with 98% of those being digital downloads. People are clearly buying individual tracks rather than albums, yet the big four labels continue to bitch and moan.

Why don’t they like this? Could it be because when you can buy only the good tracks, you don’t buy the filler dross they’ve churned out for decades? People finally have a choice about what they listen to, rather than it being dictated to us by an industry run by beancounters rather than music fans.

The article says this:

However, downloads are not generally as profitable to the industry as physical products. And despite the healthy state of singles sales, these do not usually generate significant profits for record companies, who look to album sales to recoup the investments they make in up-and-coming bands and singers.

Holy crapola! Downloads less profitable? How can that be? It costs zip to put a tune online (it costs us about $20 to put a full album on ALL the main download sites for a year – we sell literally about four albums and our costs are covered) but it costs an actual amount of money to press up CDs, print covers and physically distribute them around the country. As an American would say: ‘Do the math(s)’.

As for looking to album sales to ‘recoup investments in up-and-coming bands’….A traditional record deal is that all development costs and all marketing and promotion costs are recouped from the artist’s share of any royalties earned. The record company pays for nothing if the artist has any success.

The article finishes:

Kim Bayley, director general of the Entertainment Retailers Association, said: ‘2009 started on a low note after the collapse of Woolworths and Zavvi, but entertainment retailers across the board worked with their suppliers to end the year with a far better result than anyone had expected.’

I fully expect another year of the record industry whinging about poor sales and about ‘illegal filesharing’ stealing their rightful profits, however.

How about this, record industry people: Provide consistently good, creative music at sensible prices, with no DRM and easily accessible. Accept that the glory days of your monopoly over supply of music are gone. Stop attacking music fans. Your business will survive just fine. Or maybe it deserves to die anyway because of its lack of imagination and its greed.

Enemy Country – new tune from Secret Archives of the Vatican

vincemillett — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 20:00:17 +0000

Here’s a new tune. I’m not sure it’ll fit with the other tunes we have lined up for the next official release, so here it is as a free download.

Secret Archives of the Vatican – Enemy Country by Vince Millett

South Eastern Delta Jam

vincemillett — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 10:28:32 +0000

This is comedian Bill Bailey from the live DVD Tinselworm with Indian band from London: Bollywood Pandits.

Musical Director/Composer: Kiran Thakrar
Choral arrangement and Hindi lyrics: Anuradha Shukla
Singers: Anuradha Shukla, Kaushik Khajuria, Praful Ladwa, Bimal Pandit, Ami Joshi
Keyboards and harmonium: Kiran Thakrar
Sarod: Soumik Datta
Tabla: Mitel Purohit
Bass: Paresh Jethwa
Drums: Vikas Sakedcha
Percussion: Ghamshyam Makwana

…and here’s another one – their version of Radiohead’s Creep!

The Year of Living Orientally – podcast episode 19

vincemillett — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 00:21:09 +0000

The Year of Living Orientally, Episode 19 of the Secret Archives of the Vatican Podcast, is now available for download from HERE or you can subscribe in iTunes.

The Tale of Clarence Baskerville
High Rankin
http://www.myspace.com/highrankin
http://www.myspace.com/suicidedub

Circulation
Beats Antique
http://beatsantique.bandcamp.com/

What is Written
Secret Archives of the Vatican
http://www.brokendrumrecords.com

B-moral
Eliazer
http://soundcloud.com/eliazar/b-moral

Dog Politik
Grimelock
http://www.soundcloud.com/grimelock/dog-politik-grimelock

Waisted
Beats Antique
http://beatsantique.bandcamp.com/

Foolish
Phat Koknoz
http://soundcloud.com/awsturrock/phat-koknoz-foolish-320kbps
PK1 EP is available as a Torrent download (Requires Utorrent or Similar to Open)
http://www.mininova.org/tor/3080752

Militant and Triumphant
The Talking Dog
http://www.brokendrumrecords.com

Andromeda Dub Flight
Baby Arm Sound System
http://soundcloud.com/baby-arm-sound-system

Tabla Funk
OttoBot
http://www.groundzeroprojects.com/profile/OttoBot

Arabic Ensemble Trapped in a Desertronic Sand Storm
The Orientalist
http://www.jamendo.com/en/album/3306

Master Musicians of Jajouka

vincemillett — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 12:20:46 +0000

Here are some excellent videos of the Master Musicians of Jajouka from Morocco. You might recognise the gnarly old rockers in the first one….

Rock the Kasbah

vincemillett — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 17:56:29 +0000

You may recall that in one episode of the Secret Archives of the Vatican Podcast, I played some tunes from an album called Kasbah Rockers by Kasbah Rockers (with Bill Laswell).

Ethnotechno.com have just published a review I wrote of the album and you can read it HERE.

Orientalism

vincemillett — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 12:46:32 +0000

Orientalism is a term used to describe the imitation or depiction of aspects of Eastern cultures in the West by writers, designers and artists. Some would include musicians. Since the 19th century, ‘orientalist’ has been the term for a scholar of Oriental Studies, Orientalism is more widely used to refer to the works of French artists in the 19th century, who used elements from their travels to North Africa or the Middle East in their art.

In the 20th century, Palestinian scholar Edward Said wrote a very influential book, Orientalism, which uses the term to describe a pervasive Western practice, both academic and artistic, of prejudiced outsider interpretations of the East. He sees this as rooted in the arogant attitudes of European imperialism in the 18th and 19th centuries. Edward Said thought of orientalism as a collection of false assumptions supporting Western attitudes toward the East. He saw a ’subtle and persistent Eurocentric prejudice against Arabo-Islamic peoples and their culture.’ He thought that the tradition of false, romantic, images of Asia and the Middle East in Western culture had served as an implicit justification for Europe and American colonial and imperial ambitions. He believed that much western study of Islamic civilization was political intellectualism for the purpose of self-affirmation rather than objective study. It’s a form of racism and a tool of imperialism. The history of European colonialism distorts the writings of even the most knowledgeable, well-meaning and sympathetic Western Orientalists. Edward Said transformed the term Orientalist into a pejorative.

Secret Archives of the Vatican – Journeys Across Deserts by Vince Millett

Now, the man certainly had a point. I’ve seen many old orientalist paintings with their obsession with bare-breasted denizens of harems in a fantasy, overly mystical, east. However, ultimately I come down on the other side of the argument. Many orientalist artists were people who travelled to the east, fell in love with the land, the culture, the people, the art, the music and simply expressed that in their own creative endeavours. They weren’t necessarily evil oppressors and I don’t think supporting colonialism necessarily crossed their minds.

They did live, however, in colonialist times and operated within colonialist structures and economies. Which brings me to the current day. Colonialism and oppression have certainly not ceased but (other than with the USA) maybe such relationships between nations are more often expressed in economic and cultural domination rather than naked military involvement. So, is there such a thing as musical orientalism and, if there is, is it exploitative? Does its existence matter?

As we say on our website: The Politically Correct may (predictably) claim that what we do is neo-colonialist cultural appropriation. No; just as other artists in the Global Beats scene (such as Talvin Singh and Nitin Sawnhey) grew up exposed to many cultures and created their own sound, we make music from our collective experiences, travels and training. Who are the Politically Correct to tell anyone what they shouldn’t do? We ignore them.

Secret Archives of the Vatican – Rock The Howdah by Vince Millett

The modern world is such that new technologies have made the flow of cultural expressions truly global. Indeed, people move around the world more freely than at any time in history and bring their musical cultures with them. There are more people in my country with their roots in the Indian subcontinent than in the North American subcontinent, for example, yet the US dominates my culture. As far as I’m concerned, when we use tablas or other Indian instrumentation or tuning systems in our music we are not doing anything exotic. It is part of the true culture of our city and is not colonialist appropriation. Also, I and the other members of the Secret Archives have travelled or lived in various nations; music drawing from our own experiences is artistically valid and honest. For example, we travel to Morocco most years (and have, indeed, played some music there). We respect the culture and we contribute to the local economy. We buy instruments and we hang with local musicians. A mentality that sees using the sounds and instruments as a negative orientalism is, in my view, wrong.

I see a different form of orientalism, one I think to be more like that of at least some of the old painters and writers. We went, we saw, we fell in love. Our view of the east or of North Africa is not a romanticised work of our aspirational imagination, nor is it rooted in any feeling of inate cultural or political superiority. No, we just went and liked what we found.

If that makes us orientalists, then so be it.

Secret Archives of the Vatican – Air Gnawa by Vince Millett

Indian Electronica 011: DJ Spooky that Subliminal Kid in the mix for 80 minutes.

vincemillett — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 23:41:58 +0000

Indian Electronica say this on their website:

This mix is a unique pastiche of political rhetoric, news clips, audio from old tv shows and yes, music (!); everything from hype crowd-rocking jams to laid-back vibes… its all in there for you to groove to.

While prolific and highly regarded as a writer and conceptual artist, Paul D. Miller is probably most well known under the moniker of his constructed persona as DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid. Miller has remixed and recorded with a panoply of artists ranging from Metallica to Steve Reich to Killah Priest, and has performed in a uniquely wide variety of situations throughout the world.

DIRECT DOWNLOAD

iTunes DOWNLOAD