Guestlist

issue 73

Monthly newspaper and online publication targeting 18 to 35 year olds. The ultimate guide to the hottest parties, going out and having fun. Music, fashion, film, travel, festivals, technology, comedy, and parties! London, Barcelona, Miami and Ibiza.

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8 Issue 73 / 2015 GUESTLIST guestlist.net The producers/remixers have been at the forefront of the audiovisual scene for well over a decade, having taken their amazing live show to over 50 countries. Addictive TV are the first artists to be sanctioned by Hollywood to remix movies, and they have twice topped DJ Mag's annual visual DJ poll. Graham had been producing TV and VJing, Mark had been producing bootlegs, and producing an album of mash-ups, their paths crossed when EMI asked Graham to do the music video for Mark's 'Rapture Riders' mash-up, and Addictive TV was born. We caught up with the pair to talk about festivals, wacky instruments and their latest project, Orchestra of Samples. Can you tell us a little more about your current project, Orchestra of Samples? What was the creative process behind it? GRAHAM: Well it's been a huge undertaking, creating this project, which is why I guess very few artists have ever attempted to create something like this. We really wanted to collaborate with loads of different musicians internationally and that's pretty impractical in the real world, unless you're Bono or Sting, but obviously in the digital world of sampling, it's very practical! So we took a camera and recording equipment with us while gigging around the planet for a few years, spending time filming local musicians everywhere we travelled and that's now more than 150 musicians in over 20 countries like Brazil, Mexico, China, Senegal in West Africa, even Egypt and Kazakhstan and all over Europe! We then sampled all these recordings to create new music, and it's visual music because audiences can see the samples! When you see the show, we've chopped up the musicians as if they're playing together, when in reality none of them ever met! What's the strangest instrument you came across during the project? GRAHAM: There's quite a few! Henry Dagg's Sharpsichord, that Björk used in her last project, is quite strange, though strange in an incredible way. But one of the strangest and most fascinating things we recorded was in Mexico with an expert on ancient music who spent years searching for naturally tuned fragments of rock, as he reckons hitting rocks would have been pretty much the first instrument humans ever played. He lays out the fragments in a musical scale, a bit like a "stone xylophone", and simply plays them by hitting them with another small stone! Just incredible and it sounded like high-pitched synth notes! How has the Orchestra of Samples tour been so far? MARK: One of the best for me so far was in Italy, we performed it for the closing night of the very prestigious Romaeuropa Festival at the Museum of Contemporary Arts in Rome, and at the end the audience all stood up and applauded, and we didn't expect that! And how was it performing at Rich Mix alongside Howie B? MARK: Loved it, a very special night. It was great to see so many familiar faces there and artists we'd worked with on the project like Laetitia Sadier from Stereolab and Henry Dagg, the ultra-talented guy who collaborated with Björk on her Biophelia project with his giant Sharpsichord instrument, it was awesome to see them all there. And Howie's set was just brilliant, a real one off and he improvised the entire thing! Do you have a favourite genre of video/film to work with? GRAHAM: Action or science fiction – or ideally both! MARK: The films that I personally love, might not translate so well in an Addictive TV remix way, 1960's films like The Trip, Barbarella or the Monkees' film Head wouldn't really translate in a live show but would work in a more specialised environment like a retro cinema project. We did remix 1960's cult classic Blow Up though for a project with French arts broadcaster Arte a couple of years ago, which was cool. What's your favourite place to play and why? GRAHAM: I like everywhere – I genuinely do! Brazil is always great, but so is Italy too, but if it had to be one place, I'd say France. It's always great food, great hospitality, great technical support at gigs and always great audiences – plus the French go out to gigs at more sensible times, the opposite of playing in Spain – which I love too – but it's always at something like 4 or 5am! MARK: Hot countries with a day or two spare to spend by the pool sipping an alcoholic beverage or five! We're coming up to festival season, what's your best festival memory? GRAHAM: Has to be the enormous SOS4.8 Festival in Spain a couple of years ago - it was Mark's birthday and he missed the flight after the M25 motorway was closed and he got stuck, and then at airport security they took away part of our kit from me! It all started so badly but when Mark finally arrived in Spain, and we'd had no sound check but went out on the main stage in front of 40,000 people it was one of the best gigs we'd ever played! Very, very memorable… MARK: Glastonbury Festival last summer for me. It was just a complete drunken mud-fest topped with seeing some of my favourite new bands like Temples and Wolf Alice. We also bumped into Gaz Coombes backstage somewhere too which was very memorable indeed, and we also played the main Hell Stage at Shangri-La, which was utterly fantastic. We finished our set with a drum n bass Muppets remix we'd created especially, loved it! A very memorable festival for me that one! LIVING THE DREAM: ADDIcTIVE TV Read the full interview at: guestlist.net

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