Play it > http://youtu.be/chsKIe34ECg

One of my favourite  mixes from Murcof’s Mexican ambient music project.  It is the fantastic vocals that do it for me.  I have a complete lack good choral music – in case you know of any please let me know!  >> murcof

I must admit that I found it pretty difficult finding good art in Ethiopia. Not, as far as I can work out, because it doesn’t exist, but more perhaps because it’s difficult to access. Of course lots of it has simply been carried away to elsewhere in the world.  
Zerihun Seyoum seems like a prolific artist who captures some of Ethiopia’s charm.

‘Ethiopian Jazz’

by Zerihun Seyoum

Dark reclusive stage with a new set of B&W speakers.  In no particular order:

1/ A break in the clouds by James Holden

2/ All that you give by The Cinematic Orchestra

3/ Quit it Miriam Makeba

4/ Hello Meow by Squarepusher  [revisited]

5/ Black River by Bomb the Bass (Gui Boratto rmx)

6/ Arrival of the Birds by The London Metropolitan Orchestra & The Cinematic Orchestra

7/ In your eyes by Toby Tobias (tensnake rmx)

8/ To Build a Home by The Cinematic Orchestra

9/ Man with The Movie Camera by The Cinematic Orchestra

10/ Weird Fishes, Arpeggi by Vitamin String Quartet (original by Radiohead)

11/ Les Violins Ivres by Agoria [revisted]

12/ Quiet Dawn by Nostalgia 77 [revisted]

Pick it up at spotify here > Workshop Chart #2

The jagged beat of the music from Tigrai and Eritrea was the greatest find in Ethiopia.  Mali might be more famous for it’s music, but I will say I found more in northern Ethiopia than in Mali.  In so many cultures the local music sits apart from what’s being listened to in the main.  Not here – it’s one and the same thing.  In Adigrat night clubs people will dance to their own music, and their music is hot.

Another connection made, I also realised how Dubstep was born – a melding of electronic culture and African beat perhaps even specifically the North-East African beat – I’ll need to listen to some more before being certain.

I took 700 tunes and songs back but the CDs splintered in my bag.  Like it’s war-closed borders, it seems that Eritrean music is not mean’t to leave its land.   I will  get some more though, I’ll have to – it’s that good.

So a few weeks ago I began an offensive on Sales & Marketing.  I say an offensive because this isn’t the kind of thing that comes naturally to me.  Six books later however, and I do feel slightly wiser.

Sales and Marketing are two words that send shivers down the spine of most creatives, be they painters, musicians, photographers, writers, film makers or whatever.  I think it’s fair to say that most creatives like the idea that the world will come to them – for a band that might be the hope that one day they’ll be ‘discovered’ and catapulted into a parallel universe of fame and fortune.  Indeed it does happen, if there’s an established market out there for what you do then someone might just pick you up and slot you into that gap like the last piece of a jigsaw puzzle.  But the more creative you are, the chances of there being an established network or scene to hang your jacket on becomes less and less.  That’s the nature of creativity – if there were lots of other people doing it then it wouldn’t be creative.   So when you make a bold move towards doing something that no-one else in your town, country or even the world is doing, that’s when you need to carve out your own market and form your own scene: that’s when you need good marketing.  Alternatively you could of course get a regular job or chop off your ear and spend the rest of your days in an asylum, just like Van Gough, but it might be better to try something else out first.

I can speak from experience, I’ve been party  for more than my fair share of bad marketing.  In fact I think I could say that I can now see simple mistakes being made by people all around me – exactly the same people that consider marketing and sales to be some kind of sect of the dark side.  When I played in a band we often failed to mention what we were called when we were on stage – so people might go home thinking ‘my god, what a great band!  But what were they called?’.  A this was was just the tip of the ice berg.  On so many levels marketing is just about good communication – it could be called communication with your market, or, in this particular context, communication with people that might like your music.  The lovely thing is that it’s a creative process too – you’re probably just conjuring up ways of reaching out to people that like the same things that you do.

This Sunday some of the most interesting conceptual electronic music artists of the last decade come to the ABC in Glasgow.  Keiren Hebden, appearing as Four Tet, along with Caribou, James Holden, Nathan Fake and Rocketnumbernine, are names synonymous with cutting edge electronic music – each chartering bold and meandering sonic journeys, sometimes threatening to fall completely apart.   Starting at 6pm it’s clearly no ordinary club night and perhaps unsurprisingly, it looks like it’s sold out.  Here’s a mix for Four Tet back in 2005:

Fourtet-Breezeblock by mishasomerville

Pick up most of it on Spotify here and the other one here.

Searching for music feels like mining for coal.  Nothing for ages and then you hit a seam.  The recent seam was a a strand of ambient electro acoustic music from Mexico – represented mainly by Murcof, who seems to have formed collaborations with musics around the world, notably in India (ref Tarana).  MacCaig continues to be a mountain, with a feeling that this might take me into a period of looking for things closer to home…

One of my key reasons for writing a blog is to inspire me to keep reaching out, finding and sharing work which I consider to be ‘super creative’.  It doesn’t really matter to me what form it takes –  more often than not the really creative stuff defys classification.  Great things often get overlooked by the masses, simply because it’s difficult to see past the glut of mediocre productions on the TV and poor commentary on the creative world in most newspapers.  But the new revolution in connectivity means that the channels through which creative work is distributed are wider and further reaching than ever before.  Mass media is dieing – all-be-it slowly – and being replaced by something much more personal.

So this is an opportunity to share great things.  As an musical instrument maker that’s attempting to break new ground I can stand back and applaud people doing similar things in other fields.  With that in mind I’m posting this recent mix recorded by Magnetic Man (skream, Artwork and Benga) for BBC radio.  Challenging? For sure.  Creative? Definitely. Fantastic? I’d say so.  You might need some big speakers though!  >> listen