SUNS OF ARQA
Genre: Ambient / Chill out
Release Date: 01 April 2008
Through The Gate We Go
Label: Arka SoundGenre: Ambient / Chill out
Release Date: 01 April 2008
Details
For twenty years since the birth and subsequent worldwide spread of the experimentally oriented genre of downtempo electronic, SUNS OF ARQA has been one of the greatest behind-the-scenes pioneers. Their music is the sum of a vast and widely variable equation of musical connection and imagination.
The Arqa story begins in 1979 in Manchester, England, with a man named Michael Wadada, who was destined to mastermind one of the most obscure yet influential acts in the genre to date. Three years after his musical beginnings, Wadada attracted notice from Peter Gabriel, and performed alongside, such varied inventive geniuses as poet John Cooper Clarke, linguist Professor Stanley Unwin, flautist Tim Wheater, Adrian Sherwood and the legendary Jamaican DJ, Prince Far-I, as well as many others.
Just over half a decade later, Wadada produced "Land of a Thousand Churches" featuring many of his old musical friends as well as new ones, such as James Young, Helen Watson and afro-jazz star Feso Trombone. This album was in many ways a fusion of the two seemingly different musical and spiritual spheres of the Celtic and Hindu. The results were deemed by many as revolutionary within music and quickly came to be identified with Wadada's pioneering musical style.