Thousand Yard Prayer – 2019 review

Any sufficiently advanced music is indistinguishable from magic

Thousand Yard Prayer started the year by releasing Beauty as Resistance on New Year’s Day. We were super happy with this as it was the start of a whole new sound and direction for the label. We were particularly happy that we finally had the technology and software to come up with the melodic instrument sounds we’d always aspired to.  Our cover artwork was also great in 2019 and we’ve experimented with new approaches to that too.

TYP has always been a side project so we have lower expectations that people will have heard of TYP, and this release had  a massive 60 downloads from Bandcamp in 2019.  Thousand Yard Prayer also released Persian Swords in June (31 downloads from Bandcamp ) and Never Mind the Bulwarks in September (32 downloads from Bandcamp).  Whoop-de-doo!  There will have been a few downloads from other sites.

Streams are another matter, of course, and it’s far harder to find details. Either way, despite us being so happy with the music, we failed to get it out there although that wasn’t for lack of promotional activity on all our social media.

We have spent massively more on making and promoting TYP‘s music than we have made back in sales or streams. What little comes back goes straight into paying for more advertising. It’s a good thing we love making music more than we love money!

We’re already working on the first release for 2020 but it’s in the very early stages so there’s nothing to tell you yet. We remain enthusiastic about the project and we haven’t run out of ideas – far from it!  I guess the problem is that we don’t fit into any easily-defined musical genre so it is very hard to place our music where people will hear it. It won’t fit any playlist genre boxes.  We’ll see what happens in 2020.

Groove Heretics – Secret Archives of the Vatican Podcast 147

Here’s a new podcast episode. Please listen and share.

Rebellion without truth is like spring in a bleak, arid desert.
Khalil Gibran

Track list

1   Heretic Dub – Secret Archives of the Vatican
2   Skrutinizer – TJ Rehmi
3   Fin Roh – Aisha Kandisha’s Jarring Effects
4   Devabansha (Tantric Laswell Mix) – Makyo
5   Inner Light (Original Mix) – Juttla
6   Mountains feat Sukh Knight – Nuphlo
7   Beyond the Black River – Thousand Yard Prayer
8   Rebel Warrior – Asian Dub Foundation

 

Short rant! Ethnic music…

A short rant…

Our Christmas single!

Yeah, we did a Christmas tune.  We like this tune because of it’s unusual scale (lots of whole notes) and medieval sound.  The scale makes it really difficult to add musical parts to the melody or at least we found it hard!  The  works well at 100 bpm, which is too slow to make it dub-steppy (usually 130 to 140 bpm).  It’s just for fun and we hope you like it.

Merry Christmas from Broken Drum Records, Secret Archives of the Vatican and Thousand Yard Prayer.

 

Broken Drum Records’ artwork

People have told us that they are interested in what’s behind our music so we’ve been making short videos. Here’s one about our artwork.

 

Beat Knowledge – Secret Archives of the Vatican Podcast 146

“You are about to witness the strength of Beat Knowledge”
MC Hassan-e Sabbah

Here’s the latest episode of our podcast. It has some particularly excellent tunes!  Listen and share!

Tracks

1   Midival Punditz – Nukhta (feat Kutle Khan)
2   Eastern Dub Tactik – Cultural Wizdum
3   Thousand Yard Prayer – Women of Scythia
4   Secret Archives of the Vatican – Sohan of Qom
5   An-Ten-Nae – Kayu
6   TeeBee – Dynasty Warriors (Original Mix)
7   Dyekho – EgyPyramids
8   Fun-Da-Mental – 5 Prayers of Afghan Women

How we write and record our music

Various people have expressed interest in how we write and record our music. Every track is different but here’s how we created a recent tune, Women of Scythia.

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Subscribe to our YouTube channel
Women of Scythia on Bandcamp

 

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