A new SAotV dub tune and how we made it
There’s nothing quite like going to a good gig to get the creative juices flowing…
I went to an event called Mishti Dance last night and saw two great DJs , DJ Isuru and Nerm but the main act I went to see was Aniruddha Das aka Dr Das, the bass player with Asian Dub Foundation. On this occasion, he was in his incarnation as Dhangsha. This is experimental music – demanding but accessible electronica with a noted absence of dub basslines. (We had a brief chat about making music and martial arts!).
The music I heard was inspirational and made me want to come home and get busy in the studio, so I did. Here is the tune I came up with. I called it Mishti Dub.
For those of you who make music, here’s what I did.
I found a couple of 4/4 time tabla grooves. Tabla can be very complex but here I wanted that hypnotic driving thing that works so well with a dub bassline. The bassline is from a Bill Laswell sample CD and so is the drum loop and the weird electronica sound. The melody instruments I programmed in Cakewalk and the sample library used was Best Service Ancient ERA Persia. The female voice is from another old sample CD. A mere seven mixing desk channels and only a few hours’ work but I’m happy with it!
Once Upon a Time it Was…the Middle Ages
Once Upon a Time it Was…the Middle Ages is what we’ve called a mix we just uploaded to MixCloud. It’s some tunes by artists we really like who make music that is medieval, modern-but-medieval-sounding or is written in related modal musical forms.
Have a listen and let us know what you think. Would you like us to do more mixes like this?
Tracks
1 Como al Pie del Suplicio Estuve – Efrén López
2 De Santa María (Cantiga de Santa María, 13th century) – Al Andaluz Project
3 Durme / Bana Yücelerden Seyreden Dilber – Aman Aman
4 Samai Al Thakil – Ross Daly and Labyrinth
5 Vox Clamantis – Luc Arbogast
6 El que vull – L’ham De Foc
7 Game of Thrones – Luc Arbogast
This is a Good Day – Secret Archives of the Vatican Podcast 139
Here’s episode 139 of our podcast. Please check out these artists and buy some of their music.
Tracks
1 Mazlum Uruç – Delhi
2 Shankarma – Persian Dub
3 Secret Archives of the Vatican – Green Destiny (Ethnostep Mix)
4 Al Mothlath – Dead Traveler
5 Lo.Renzo (feat Nico & Asha) – Lhwar Jewr
6 Transglobal Underground – Body Machine (Badmarsh Remix)
7 Anubis – Abu Dhabi
8 Dubnium – Guanyin
Don’t forget to listen all of our previous episodes and please share the links with your friends.
New Ethnostep compilation – features one of our tunes
Released for Netlabel Day 2018, this is the eighth compilation in the Ethnostep series. Secret Archives of the Vatican and Thousand Yard Prayer have had tracks on some of the previous releases and there is a Secret Archives tune on this one, Green Destiny (Ethnostep Mix).
One significant development is that the album features two tracks by the legendary producer and bassist Bill Laswell.
Check out previous Ethnostep albums and also the many other fine releases from the Subbass label.
Reissue of our first CD album from 1998
We’ve just made our first CD album Reformation, originally released in 1998, available from Bandcamp.
We have mixed feelings about it now…it was early days and we didn’t quite know what we were doing or even what we were trying to do.
If we were writing or recording these tunes now, we’d probably do everything differently. However – this is our history!
We don’t have a good file of the original artwork, so this is a new cover. There’s a small image of the original front cover included in the download.
A few days ago we posted a video of this track and at that point we were planning for the tune to be on the next album release by Thousand Yard Prayer.
However, the more we listened to it, the more we realised that it didn’t fit with the general sound or themes of the tracks being worked on for the album. So, we decided to simply release it as a single track. Here it is for download or streaming. We hope you like it. (We’re happy with the artwork too – it took ten minutes to create!).
Dust – the Remixes (reissue of 2001 album)
One of our Facebook friends asked us to make one of our old releases available again. Fortunately, we had a CDR with the tracks so we could do so.
It’s a collection of remixes of one of our tunes called Dust. To be honest, I far preferred all the remixes to the original track and I don’t think we ever put Dust on an album. The enthusiasm was lacking.
2001 was before online music was a practical reality so music was still distributed mostly on CD. We shifted almost no copies of this album, unfortunately.
The remixes are banging, though! Each of the artists took a different approach and there’s some real creativity on show. These remixes deserve to be heard.
