We think that the music Secret Archives of the Vatican makes is interesting. Although there are now many, many artists from around the world mixing Western electronica with non-Western musical genres, we don't sound like any of them. That's not entirely deliberate - we've tried to sound like others but we're not actually able to!
Anyway, you may or may not be aware that there's not a great deal of actual playing of musical instruments in our music. We use a lot of sampling, a lot of programming, a lot of digital audio editing to come up with the rhythms and tunings and sounds that are our style.
Why don't we play the instruments ourselves? Well - all members of the Archives crew are musicians. We all play more than one instrument. However, much of what we want to achieve in the studio is beyond our technical abilities, hence the computer based approach to music making. In particular, we're currently exploring Middle Eastern tuning systems, so most Western instruments simply can't play the notes. I do have a fretless guitar but don't have quite the playing experience with it or confidence to achieve the ideas I want to.
I guess we could record guest musicians. The problems with that include lack of money to pay anyone, our studios being in our homes so times we can make noise are limited and that many of the musicians we'd love to collaborate with are in other countries or just too far away in this country.
Our next Secret Archives of the Vatican release will be called Storms. The title relates to the Turkish Storm Calendar and that is the thread that connects all the tracks. The tunes are based on Turkish traditional rhythms and makam tunings although they won't necessarily sound particularly Turkish. Like I said, we try to do these things but it always coming out sounding like us.
Release is expected to be at the end of July 2013 but here's a track to be getting on with. Click on the link to hear it.
It's in a 9 beat rhythm, Afr-Mawlawii, divided 4-2-3. It is tuned to Makam Hicaz Zirgule, which means the second and fifth notes in the scale used are not tuned as they would be in Western music.
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