New release from Broken Drum Records: Nine Ships by Thousand Yard Prayer. Middle-Eastern rhythms and tunings collide with dubstep-inflected Croydonian bass music. Eclectic esoterica for the musically open-minded.
Secret Archives of the Vatican: news and views from the world of transglobal breakbeat dub science.
Showing posts with label Arabian. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Arabian. Show all posts
Monday, 3 September 2012
Tuesday, 13 September 2011
How do we market our new album? Part 9
Well, here’s the final post on how we’ve marketed the Barbary Lion album. We’re not stopping, of course, but all the obvious main activity has happened and I’ve written about it.
We’ve gone past 300 downloads from Bandcamp and about 10% of downloaders have chosen to pay. The interest raised by this release has also led to a significant number of additional downloads of our back catalogue – there’s always a trickle but it ramped right up recently. We’ve also had a pleasing amount of plays of tracks from Barbary Lion in podcasts around the world. There seems to be no let up in Russian download sites bootlegging us but I don’t think that will really have made any difference to our own downloads.
I’ve sent marketing blurb and direct download links with friendly covering emails to lots of bass music and electronic music blogs over the last month but we’ve seen little response. I admit to being a little at a loss to explain this. They seem to be writing about, and reviewing, a wide range of related music and should, therefore, be interested in covering ours. I know it’s nothing to do with the quality of the release – we know it’s damned good. In some cases, the blogs are connected with people we know so it’s a little sad that there hasn’t been much interest. However, I’m a firm believer that it’s their call, not ours. We have to respect their decisions. I guess I don’t write about everything they do either.
We’ve learned a lot from this release. I believe the name-your-own-price model works well for us. It might work even better for those working in more mainstream musical genres. We’ve developed several of our musical ideas too and have already started planning the next couple of releases.
How do we market our new album? Part 8
How do we market our new album? Part 7
How do we market our new album? Part 6
How do we market our new album? Part 5
How do we market our new album? Part 4
How do we market our new album? Part 3
How do we market our new album? Part 2
How do we market our new album? Part 1
Saturday, 16 April 2011
Al Jisr Hip Hop Mixtape 'Bridging Cultures' Part II
Here in the Secret Archives, we like Arabic hip hop. Heard about Lebanese artist DJ Lethal Skillz through Iraq-Canadian rapper The Narcicyst.
Lethal Skillz has just released the second volume of an open-ended series of transnational mixtapes.
It's called:
RE-VOLT & PhonoSapien Productionz Present:AL Jisr Hip Hop Mixtape 'Bridging Cultures' Part II
You can find full details HERE and there's a link to download the mix.
Lethal Skillz has just released the second volume of an open-ended series of transnational mixtapes.
It's called:
RE-VOLT & PhonoSapien Productionz Present:AL Jisr Hip Hop Mixtape 'Bridging Cultures' Part II
You can find full details HERE and there's a link to download the mix.
Tuesday, 12 April 2011
Diatribes of a Dying Tribe - review
If you read this blog regularly, and if you listen to our podcast (you do, don't you?), you'll know we are fans of Arab-Canadian rapper, Yassin Alsalman, aka The Narcicyst.
I posted a short video here last month of an interview with The Narcicyst, where he talks about a book he has just published, The Diatribes of a Dying Tribe.
The Narcicyst's website, iraqisthebomb.com, says this:
The Diatribes of a Dying Tribe is about the jumbled reality of North American life. The destructive components of juxtaposing cultures, the birth of immigrant internationality and the resilient art that comes out of struggle and oppression.
It is the story of four young Arab men who joined forces to create their own representative governing meeting. Excentrik, Ragtop, Omar Offendum & The Narcicyst spent two weeks in California and endless hours on a computer crafting the Fear of an Arab Planet; an examination of the heightened anxiety towards Islam, the Oriental gaze towards the Arab face and the ever-growing paranoia of the ‘other’, all over some bangin’ beats to rock to. As a post-analytical view of the making of an album, this book serves as a document on the burgeoning Arab poetry scene, and how the two mother cultures of a migrant society coalesced through a modern hyper-culture called Hip-Hop. From TSA agents to ABC rappers, The Arab Summit were on a mission to be heard… and that is exactly what happened.
The book is short, less than 130 pages long, and includes essays by Omar Offendum, Ragtop and Excentrik as well as Yassin Alsalman himself. There are also brief interviews with Cilvaringz, Malikah, Eslaam Jawaad, as well as members of AK, DAM and Soul Purpose.
The main writers' styles are different, from the conceptual, dense verbiage of The Narcicyst, to the more accessible styles of Nizar 'Ragtop' Wattad, Omar 'Omar Offendum' Chakaki and the analytical flow of Tarik 'Excentrik' Kazaleh. They talk about the contradictions of being of varied Arab origins, living and being creative in pre- and post-9/11 North America. They describe the processes of developing and adapting self-identity in a changing and often hostile culture. They speak of how hiphop gave them a voice, a way to express anger, pride, faith, self-awareness and resistance. We read about how they met each other and how they started a recording project, The Arab Summit, that released an album in 2007, Fear of an Arab Planet.
The book finishes with excerpts from round-table email discussions with a wide range of hip hop artists, including: Eslam Jawad (Arap/London-Lebanon), Rush (Arabian Knights/Egypt), Mazzi (Soul Purpose/Iran), Lethal Skills (961 Underground/Lebanon) and more. Their experiences of being rappers and producers vary a lot - it's a very interesting and inspiring read.
Diatribes of a Dying Tribe is fully referenced, literary sources as well as the music mentioned in the text (had me running to dig out old school hip hop albums from NWA and Wu Tang to hear what these guys heard when they answered hip hop's call).
You should buy it.
Buy the book, download Fear of an Arab Planet (free!), read the blog, watch videos HERE.
I posted a short video here last month of an interview with The Narcicyst, where he talks about a book he has just published, The Diatribes of a Dying Tribe.
The Narcicyst's website, iraqisthebomb.com, says this:
The Diatribes of a Dying Tribe is about the jumbled reality of North American life. The destructive components of juxtaposing cultures, the birth of immigrant internationality and the resilient art that comes out of struggle and oppression.
It is the story of four young Arab men who joined forces to create their own representative governing meeting. Excentrik, Ragtop, Omar Offendum & The Narcicyst spent two weeks in California and endless hours on a computer crafting the Fear of an Arab Planet; an examination of the heightened anxiety towards Islam, the Oriental gaze towards the Arab face and the ever-growing paranoia of the ‘other’, all over some bangin’ beats to rock to. As a post-analytical view of the making of an album, this book serves as a document on the burgeoning Arab poetry scene, and how the two mother cultures of a migrant society coalesced through a modern hyper-culture called Hip-Hop. From TSA agents to ABC rappers, The Arab Summit were on a mission to be heard… and that is exactly what happened.
The book is short, less than 130 pages long, and includes essays by Omar Offendum, Ragtop and Excentrik as well as Yassin Alsalman himself. There are also brief interviews with Cilvaringz, Malikah, Eslaam Jawaad, as well as members of AK, DAM and Soul Purpose.
The main writers' styles are different, from the conceptual, dense verbiage of The Narcicyst, to the more accessible styles of Nizar 'Ragtop' Wattad, Omar 'Omar Offendum' Chakaki and the analytical flow of Tarik 'Excentrik' Kazaleh. They talk about the contradictions of being of varied Arab origins, living and being creative in pre- and post-9/11 North America. They describe the processes of developing and adapting self-identity in a changing and often hostile culture. They speak of how hiphop gave them a voice, a way to express anger, pride, faith, self-awareness and resistance. We read about how they met each other and how they started a recording project, The Arab Summit, that released an album in 2007, Fear of an Arab Planet.
The book finishes with excerpts from round-table email discussions with a wide range of hip hop artists, including: Eslam Jawad (Arap/London-Lebanon), Rush (Arabian Knights/Egypt), Mazzi (Soul Purpose/Iran), Lethal Skills (961 Underground/Lebanon) and more. Their experiences of being rappers and producers vary a lot - it's a very interesting and inspiring read.
Diatribes of a Dying Tribe is fully referenced, literary sources as well as the music mentioned in the text (had me running to dig out old school hip hop albums from NWA and Wu Tang to hear what these guys heard when they answered hip hop's call).
You should buy it.
Buy the book, download Fear of an Arab Planet (free!), read the blog, watch videos HERE.
Thursday, 3 March 2011
Cafe Noah - the music of Jewish Arabs
Here's a charming short film from Al Jazeera about Jewish Arabs and their music in the early days of the Israeli state.
Sunday, 3 October 2010
Bint al Wazir by Secret Archives of the Vatican
We've just completed a new tune, Bint al Wazir, which will most likely be on our next EP release. Watch this space! In the meantime, we've made a nice video for it.
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