Orchestra Of Samples

I'm no world music expert. But I do love music of all forms, so I took myself down to the Arts Centre to see Addictive TV's project in action. Orchestra of Samples is an album's worth of tunes that have been amassed by recording samples from singers, rappers and musicians from around the world, and then mashing them up to make proper music. It's a clever and innovative concept, especially on paper, but I'm not so convinced it works so well 'live'.

With a relatively small crowd in attendance but a lot of kit onstage, this is the fifth night of their tour, which will also encompass Womad and other festivals en route. Permanent members Graham and Mark start the hour long set with some chilled tunes, mixing them live. Behind them, a large screen displays constantly changing video footage of the relevant musicians that we're hearing playing their samples. It looks like there's a wide age range and a huge mix of nationality, heritage, race and creed amongst the participants. It's a pity it didn't say on the screen which country they were each from, but you could pretty much tell anyway. There were traditional strings, trumpets, drums and vocals, and then there was the keyboard that looked like it was made of icicles that you threw a ball againt to make notes, and there were the African boys drumming on what looked like cardboard boxes. Joining the duo onstage on stage on occasion were Tolly, one of the original members of Addictive TV who now lives in Norwich and is rather gifted on the melodica, and Paul Gunter, a member of STOMP who got busy on the bin drum (probably not its official name).