Archive for the 'future of music' CategoryPage 9 of 17

Kutiman's ThruYou: YouTube Gets Mixed and Matched

published
on March 11, 2009
by
Sandra
in collaboration, culture, DIY, future of music, genres, music, remixing, technology, and video
. Closed Tags: , , , , .

I think we can all pretty much agree that the remix revolution is in full force at this point. Musicians (at least the ones who get music 2.0) are letting their fans remix their music. Artists like Girl Talk, who we recently interviewed, are mashing up songs left and right. Well, that’s great. BUT, what about all the no names and indie artists who are just as usually more creative, and yet don’t get recognized for their remixing efforts because they just don’t have the same visibility. How do the little guys introduce their smashed up art to the world?

Social media has certainly lent itself to such aims. But Twitter, MySpace, blogs, Facebook, and all the other myriad tools out there don’t necessarily guarantee success. You know what TOTALLY helps though? A viral video. Soooo…. how does one make a video viral? It’s pretty freakin hard as it turns out. Some of the successful ones out there were secretly promoted by companies hired to ensure virality. Some just got lucky. And some are really just… That. Good. Kutiman’s ThruYou project is one of the those.

Kutiman, an Israeli artist who grew up on jazz and later became enamored with genres like funk, reggae, and afrobeat (especially that of the Nigerian star, Fela Kuti), managed to stitch together all the proper ingredients for a very clever, and quite viral, video. He spliced and diced together all sorts of random content exclusively from YouTube (um, can we say long tail?) Not only did the result not suck, it was actually really good. The songs are solid and the video editing is slick and interesting. Perhaps Kutiman did kill the video star… See how did it here.

There are 7 tracks, all well worth a gander. Here’s my favorite:

Actually it’s a tie between that one and this one:

Pretty sweet, right?

Yesod Williams Interview (Pepper)

published
on March 3, 2009
by
Sandra
in DIY, future of music, genres, interview, music, and remixing
. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , , , , , .

pepperbig

In case you hadn’t noticed, Evolving Music has been a little smitten with the band Pepper lately. We brought you their remix contest (if you haven’t made a remix yet, do yourself a favor and have a go at it) and a previously unreleased live recording of their song “Too Much” during the Tra.kz Artist Spotlight. Still can’t get enough of these guys? Good. How about a little insider information straight from the horse’s mouth? I had a chance to catch up with Yesod Williams, the drummer. Here’s what he had to say:

Sandra Possing: Tell us about Pepper. Who is in the band? Where did you guys meet?

Yesod Williams: I play drums. Kaleo [Wassman] sings and plays guitar and then Brett [Bollinger] also sings and plays guitar. They kind of switch off the lead vocal role. We are from Kona, Hawaii originally, the big island of Hawaii. We all went to school together. It’s a super small town, so everyone knows everyone. We’ve pretty much known each other our whole lives and they’d been playing music all through high school. I started playing drums when I was really young and got burned out and pretty much quit altogether through high school and then right after me and Brett graduated, which was in ’97, we were at a party hanging out and me and Kaleo started talking and just thought it’d be cool to see if we could get something going and see if we vibed off of each other and that’s when we started the band in like June of 1997 and then moved to Southern California in May of ’99.

SP: Did you have any idea it was gonna become a serious thing or were you just messing around?

YW: We were just messing around at first, but I came to California on vacation after I graduated high school and I kind of got an inkling – I saw some bands over here – and I was like “Man, it might be something serious, if we actually take it seriously and make the jump over the Pacific and try and do something with it.” At first we were just playing parties and just playing around, but we always had faith and had the vision that we could do something with it. It’s so funny, cause I mean I listen to our first CD we ever recorded and in retrospect I’m like “Wow, we thought we were actually gonna go somewhere with that CD? We were crazy.”

SP: What do you do when you’re not playing music?

YW: Um, pretty much just golf and surf for me personally and try to live a “normal life” cause it’s such a different life being on the road all the time and not being at home, so we just kinda do the every day normal life thing. We do a lot of business too because we own our own record label, LAW Records. So we’re pretty much always working. We’ve always got our mind on music and what not.

SP: Do you hang out with a lot of musicians? Hawaiian or Californian in particular?

YW: There’s a band called Iration that lives up in Santa Barbara. They’re always coming down here to play and what not so we hang out with them. We also have a bunch of friends that moved over here from Hawaii so we still have a close knit group of friends that we grew up with.

SP: Have you ever surfed with Jack Johnson?

YW: No, I haven’t. We’ve actually never even played with him. Funny story… We had a chance to play with him a long time ago, back when we still had our 1976 Dodge Sportsman van [probably looked something like this] that we bought when we first moved over here and we were on our way up – this is in 2001 – we were on our way up to play with him and the transmission fully gave out and the van would only go in reverse. That was our one time that we were gonna play with him and needless to say it didn’t work out.

SP: So you didn’t drive backwards all the way up?

YW: No. No, we thought about it, but driving backwards just to get home was hard enough.

SP: Tell us about your music. What’s it about? Who are your influences? How do you describe your style?

YW: We grew up listening to so many different kinds of music and Hawaii is such a melting pot of pretty much everything. Music, culture and everything. I think that’s kind of what shines through. We dabble in many different genres, so really you can say it’s a bunch of different stuff put together, but in a nutshell I always just say we’re just a rock band with a reggae influence, pretty much.

SP: What kind of connection do you have with your fans? It’s very different when you’re playing live and when you’re not, but how do you keep that vibe and relationship going when you’re not performing?

YW: The main way to keep connected with your fans is touring, like you’re saying, but that’s why we’re doing this remix contest and everything. When you’re not touring you still gotta show your appreciation and keep them interested. You gotta give back. It’s the only reason any of this is possible, is cause of the fans. So, any way that we can get them involved – this being one of them – we’re super excited about… Kind of get them involved in the creative process and have them put their own flavor on our music and what not.

SP: So, the internet plays a pretty big role in that process for you guys?

YS: Ya, it’s so cool because it just gives you that much more connection with your fans, whereas back in the day it was like “Ok, buy the CD and then once a year you’ll get to see the band.”

SP: What first got you interested in having fans remix your music?

YS: I’d heard about someone doing it before and it just seemed like such a cool idea, you know? It seemed like something I wanted to do to my favorite band. Like, Red Hot Chili Peppers, for instance, is one of our favorite bands for the whole band as a whole. Given that opportunity and opening that door for music fans like ourselves – it’s just the most amazing thing ever. And why not? Art is the ultimate communicator. Anyway you can connect, bands should take complete advantage of it.

SP: Not everyone is open to the idea of people messing with their music – some of them are like “I wrote it, it’s my stuff, don’t touch it”, but that’s becoming so much less common and people are really embracing this whole remix movement. Do you think this movement is going to keep growing?

YW: I think it absolutely will. Like you said, it’s just a win-win situation for everyone. I mean, I do understand when people feel like their songs are their babies. You don’t want someone intruding on them and what not. But, at the end of the day, you’ve already released your songs on an album how you want them and this is icing on the cake and I don’t think it’s going to hurt anyone. I don’t think it’s going to ruin anyone’s band or ruin anyone’s music. It’s just gonna get people more excited and more passionate about the band.

SP: It allows fans to have a more emotional connection with each song if they can actually get involved.

YW: Absolutely.

SP: What’s the story with the song you’re using in the remix contest? What’s it about? When was it recorded? Why did you pick this one?

YW: It’s a song called “Freeze” and it’s the first song on our last album, which was Pink Crustaceans and Good Vibrations. It’s basically all about being at a show and, in a sense, claiming your sound. Not in a cocky way, just in a confident way… Just that you know what you are doing and you can blow people away. It’s not in an arrogant way at all. The song was recorded in Redondo Beach at a studio called Total Access and it was produced by Paul Leary from the Butthole Surfers – the original guitar player.

SP: What do you expect to happen with this experiment?

YW: I don’t know. There’s no telling, you know! We could get a version that’s even better than the one that’s on our CD, you know what I mean?

SP: Does that scare you?

YW: No, not even. I think the possibilities are endless and I’m really excited to see what the fans come up with. It’s super cool too cause we’re gonna… whoever wins the contest we’re gonna release their version on our label in some format, whether it be a single or on a compilation or something like that. On the other end of it, you know, some 16 year old kid could do this, could learn how to do mixing through the contest and then, you never know, he goes to school for music, ends up working in the industry… It could plant seeds for people. That would be super gratifying in my eyes.

SP: That’s quite a prize – certainly good motivation to participate. What do you see happening in the music industry in the next 5 to 10 years? What with the industry crumbling, the internet etc?

YW: I see the independent world becoming really the main epicenter for music and people releasing their own records. Getting the fans more involved too. One of the things we want to do with our next record is we want to record maybe 16-40 songs, and put rough versions of them up on the internet and basically have the fans pick which songs they want on the CD and then release the CD the way they want it. I think the DIY and the independent world is really gonna boom and take the front seat to the industry and the major record labels are going to take the back seat.

SP: When you guys make a song, how does it work? Does one person write the lyrics and everyone else figures out there part, or what?

YW: The majority of the ideas come from Brett and Kaleo and then we get together. I’ll have a couple ideas here and there, whether it be a chorus, a verse, or a whole song or just the guitar part or something. That’s how it kind of works between the three of us and then we get together. Then that’s when it becomes a Pepper song is when we all get together and we put our twist on it and we come to a common ground and then we go from there.

SP: Does that take a long time usually?

YW: Not really, especially Brett and Kaleo. Those guys are like vaults of music. They’re constantly writing and they have so many great ideas. It’s usually a pretty quick process. The thing we don’t want to do is kinda over think it. Some things get lost in translation and you lose some of the essence if you sit there and over think and rethink and rethink it. You’ve kinda gotta go with your first instinct.

SP: If you weren’t making music, what would you be doing?

YW: We’d all be waiters at a restaurant, cause that’s what we were doing before we started the band. It’s not that bad of a gig in Hawaii. You work in a nice restaurant, make $100-200/night in tips and you just gotta work at night and you can surf in the daytime. It’s pretty gravy.

SP: But, you’re pretty happy with what you’re doing now?

YW: Ya, I still pinch myself sometimes. We’re actually getting paid to do something we’d do anyway and that’s the way we’re living the dream. I want to enjoy it to the fullest for as long as I can.

SP: Have you had any crazy fan interactions, people throwing underwear on the stage, psycho stalkers etc?

YW: There have been a lot of underwear and bras thrown up on stage and people jumping on stage. That kind of stuff happens all the time… it comes with the territory. No real crazy stalker stories or anything… It’s more just, you know, when a show is sold out there is always a ton of people waiting outside the bus and trying to get tickets to the show. We try to help them out as much as we can and hook everyone up but, you know, there’s only so much you can do.

SP: Any last words of wisdom for our Evolving Music readers?

YW: Ya, definitely. I think the biggest advice for anyone that wants to be in a band or start a band is you gotta realize how much hard work it is and touring is the key to everything. You gotta get out there and you gotta go see the people that are supporting you and shake their hand and really show that appreciation and never take those people for granted.

Zion I – The Take Over Review

published
on February 16, 2009
by
ACtual
in artist/album reviews, collaboration, concert reviews, future of music, genres, music, and remixing
. 5 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

In 2006, Zion I released their album Break A Dawn, an album previously released only in Japan and brought stateside following the release of their collaboration with The Grouch, Heroes in the City of Dope. And then, radio silence. Without question the group was staying busy with live performances, interviews, AmpLive’s foray into remix work with the Rainydayz Remixes of Radiohead’s In Rainbows, but the gap between Break A Dawn and tomorrow’s release of The Take Over has been the longest drought of new Zion I material since the gap between 2000’s Mind Over Matter and their sophomore 2003 release Deep Water Slang. And the good news? The Take Over shows what ten years of maturity, musical comfort and genre influence can do to two people dedicated to their craft. The bad news? It clocks in at under 50 minutes, and when it ends, you can’t help but wish there was more.

While The Take Over doesn’t carry with it the same continuity of thought that made Mind Over Matter an intro to outro listen, it does bring the most eclectic genre influences into the music since that album. AmpLive’s creativity with his hip-hop and stunning ability to incorporate other genres helps create a musical backdrop for Zumbi’s lyrics that transcend plain hip-hop or rap. Following the intro, “Geek to the Beat” kicks off the album with a mixture of tribal drums and background chant sounds that are mingled with electro synths and heavy 808s. While it would be very easy for other artists to fall into the trap of using one of these sounds at the expense of the others, Amp has managed to find the balance, alternating between the very simple beat and chants during the verse and then bringing in a heavier electric feel for the chorus. The video below has a snippet of the song performed live on Friday night in Oakland.

“Takeover” follows “Geek to the Beat” and provides a much more traditional hip-hop sound. Amp brings in a boom-bap beat with simple keys in the background and a cut up sample that creates a feel of building in the song while you shrug your shoulders to the sample and then feel the beat come back underneath. Zumbi sounds effortless in his lyrics, and as it goes to chorus, the “takeover” sample mixes with undulating synths and a soulful sounding male vocalist sample. As the song fades and goes to outro, Amp’s musical skills are once again on showcase with a funky electro sound that sets up one of the singles off the album, “DJ DJ.”

This track is certainly one of the more out there cuts on the album as it uses techno and fast paced electro sounds with a chorus snippet in Spanish provided by Deuce Eclipse. Amp on here pays homage to his craft by sprinkling in something of almost anything he can find, including 80’s synth work that could have worked in almost any dance hall. What is perhaps most exciting about this track is that it goes in so many different directions, yet the potential for the evolution of the song is further enhanced by the fact that the group has released the stems to the songs online for fans to remix their own versions. Below is a brief clip of their performance of “DJ DJ” from Friday night.

This goes into one of the most solid songs on the album, “Antenna” featuring Amp’s main collaborator on the Radiohead remixes, Codany Holiday. On this track, Holiday’s refrain of “make me feel brand new” sounds at once both current and retro, a heartfelt line used more as hook than as chorus. What’s fantastic about it is that Zumbi appears to have felt it too as he structures his verses around Holiday’s hook, the simple and in places sparse beat and Amp’s synth work which here sound like falling sheets of rain. The result is a reflective song about Zumbi’s current situation and thoughts, with ascending vocoder sounding samples through the chorus. The electro remix and distortion at the tail end of the song helps to break it down before leaving you with the full beat and hook as it trails out. Video of Friday’s performance of the beginning of this song below.

From there we go into the track duo of “Caged Bird Pt. 1” featuring Brother Ali and “In the Mornin’ (Caged Bird Pt. 2).” These two tracks work as contrasting pieces. The uptempo and refreshing strings provide the melody for a moving and full sounding hip-hop track with a sample-heavy chorus complete with scratch effects and chop up by Amp. The lyrics focus on the idea of something better, and the feeling of the song as a whole is that the street and the cage provide the lyrics, but the music helps open it up and make flight possible. The easy, soulful and bluesy transition to the beginning of pt 2. then gives way to a grimy and deep sound with a much heavier beat. Pt. 2 sounds a bit less hopeful and upbeat than pt. 1, as if pt. 1 is meant to help the caged birds sing, and pt. 2 takes a view of the grind that creates the cage. What’s amazing here is that using the same melody and samples, Amp weaves two completely different songs together with such precision that the split between them is virtually invisible.

“Radio” takes a page from the “Hey Ya” book in that it incorporates a traditional drum/clap sound and acoustic guitar strum, making it sound like a hybrid of hip-hop and 50’s pop music. Zumbi raps about genres and musical evolution on this track that is really a retrospective of radio music and pays homage to the great artists of the past, from Miles Davis to Jimi Hendrix. And on the following track, Amp attempts to bring in a good portion of this retrospective with “Gumbo,” a brief interlude song steeped in horn work and Ragtime influenced jazz. But careful never to let his genre influence tilt too far in one direction, Amp takes the horns and decomposes them to electronic fluctuations of a space jazz variety.

“Country Baked Yams” featuring Devin the Dude is probably the largest departure from Zion I’s signature sounds on the album. It’s a song that will probably do very well on the radio and will have followers, but for me is a bit off. This isn’t to say that I don’t recognize the attempt at something different here and praise the attempt, I just personally don’t think it works. The track is steeped in bubble gum synths and the vocal alteration to a higher pitch makes it feel almost a bit childish. But the chorus is finely crafted with a simple vocal part and a very nice guitar melody with a nice bass line. It’s certainly closer to pop than I’ve heard from Zion I, but as an exploration and experiment, it shows that they’re willing to cross lines and try new things, which I’m never opposed to, even when the results fall short.

“Coastin” featuring K.Flay follows, opening with and carrying through piano that sounds heavily influenced from Amp’s work on Radiohead’s music. The drum clap gives a background for K.Flay’s smooth and somewhat smoky voice and the lyrics by Zumbi sound like he was without question coastin when he wrote it. Amp mixes in some crowd sounds to complete the track. The result is a driving song, perfect for late night with the sunroof open or mid-day with all the windows down. See the clip below:

The last single of the album, “Juicy Juice” comes next, and is the first song that I actually heard off this album a few months ago. The deep 808s and the hyphy feel come out on this Bay Area track that could easily have been placed as the opening track in place of “Geek to the Beat.” The sing-along worthy track, “Peppermint Patty” follows and has the vocal singalong part backed by horns and an eerie melody behind Zumbi’s lyrics. Next is “Bring in the Light” with a grim outlook on the current state of the world, including the bleak but all too familiar thought in the lines “Killing for oil/protest for peace.” Throughout the track, Amp brings jazz touches in, which go full steam ahead in the last minute of the song as he experiments with digitally distorted samples from the song mixed with a jazz piano and more space jazz sounds. While all of the tracks are solid on this album, the outros and interludes are where Amp really shows what kind of producer he is and how well grounded he is musically. They end the album with “Legacy” featuring Ty and Jennifer Johns, a jazz/lounge/pop fusion that draws on some of the tribal beats that show up throughout the album.

All told, there’s something for just about every listener on this album, whether you’ve followed Zion I since Mind Over Matter or if The Take Over is the first time you’re hearing about them (in which case, which rock have you been living under?) Latin, Jazz, Techno, Dance, Blues, Funk and Rock all find a place here, and even when they may not work for a particular listener, the desire to try and experiment with everything can’t be overlooked and is part of what makes the album great. What’s important to note is that while the song by song break down goes to describing what can be found on the album, it doesn’t do justice to the music here. Zumbi’s lyrics are introspective and conscious enough to get better with every listen, and similarly, AmpLive’s production work incorporates so many genres and layers to the musical tapestry he creates here that it’s hard not to constantly pick up new pieces to the sound that you hadn’t heard before. The Take Over drops tomorrow.

Zion I Remix Contest from The Take Over

published
on February 12, 2009
by
ACtual
in collaboration, culture, DIY, future of music, genres, music, remix promotions, and remixing
. 5 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

Bay Area hip-hop duo Zion I is well known over the course of their discography for exploring musical sounds and genres not typically associated with the sounds of the streets. Zumbi’s introspective and intellectually based lyrics have found an excellent match in the musically curious mind of AmpLive, who aside from remixing Radiohead’s In Rainbows album has brought soul, funk, electro, house and rock vibes to hip-hop in a way that makes Zion I both incredible and enlightening to listen to.

Silent on the discography front since their 2006 collaboration with The Grouch, Zion I has poised themselves for a new group release, their first since they brought the Japanese only release Break A Dawn over the Pacific for a stateside release in ’06. Their new album, The Take Over, is scheduled to drop next Tuesday, and in keeping with their format of engaging their fans and examining ways to evolve their own music in our current remix culture, they have launched a remix contest for one of the tracks off the new album, “DJ DJ.”

Today, Zion I released their stems from “DJ DJ” to the general public, using MixMatchMusic‘s simple Remix Wizard. If you’re an audio wiz already, just download the stems and work them out, but even for those with less musical experience or musicians not interested in downloading the stems, the MixMatch wizard provides the stems and the mixing interface to make this contest accessible to anyone with a computer. What’s excellent about the format here is that it doesn’t require any previous experience, as the wizard is very intuitive and easy to use.

Finish your remix and upload it by March 12th and you’re in the running for some excellent prizes, including a spot for your remix on Zion I’s Myspace page and lots of great Zion I stuff for the winners. For more information or to enter the contest, click here.

MixMatchMusic Launches Tra.kz

published
on February 11, 2009
by
ACtual
in collaboration, culture, future of music, genres, music, nerd, and website
. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , , , , , .

It seems that the more accessible and fast information becomes, the greater the urge is to make it go faster. The evolution it took to go from snail mail to e-mail was not only a giant cost and speed leap, but a shift in thinking about the way to convey information simply. From there, IM made short and fast the norm for online communication. With these changes in communication and upgrades in data sharing speeds, artists are now not only able to immediately present new content to their fans, but they’re also able to spread the information about that content much more rapidly. Now, as the internet culture reaches another stepping stone in social networking and media, Facebook status messages and sub-141 character Twitter messages have become commonplace, making the need to dumb down traditionally fingernail-on-chalkboard length URLs to something that can link to a site and still hold space for a description. There are numerous sites that provide services like these already, Twitpic for pictures and bit.ly for other content, but this morning marks the launch of a URL shortener specifically made to direct readers to music related content.

MixMatchMusic has been working diligently with the online music community through their site which promotes the collaboration, organization and monetization of user created content. And while online artist content and collaboration remain the primary focus, MMM has been forward thinking in their approach by quickly recognizing and assimilating various aspects of the ever-expanding musical presence on the web, as evidenced by both their Remix Wizard and their site sequencer. It makes sense then that today they offered up a new and incredibly useful tool to the online community in tra.kz, a URL shortener for all things music.

When sending a shortened URL over the web, it’s easy for other people to skim links if they’re not sure of where it’s going or why they should be interested. With tra.kz, users will always know that the link points to an Mp3, artist interview, music video or something else musical, making the custom URL creator perfect for anyone trying to share music related content with a simple and easy to remember link. Like the press release about the tra.kz launch found at tra.kz/l82g.

In conjunction with the launch of tra.kz, numerous artists will team with MixMatchMusic today to release a new song on Twitter each hour. With musicians and fans increasingly turning to Twitter to keep up to date with the latest group information, the ability to share songs and other band related information through an easily recognizable music URL shortener can become central in online promotions. It’d be easy to stop there, create the tra.kz/___ URL and leave it at that. But in the interest of making the service social platform friendly, the Twitter box is provided right below the short form to send directly from there.

Keep checking in today with @EvolvingMusic and @MixMatchMusic for new songs released using the tra.kz link shortener. Artists will include Pepper, Slightly Stoopid and Throw Me the Statue to name just a few. The folks over at Controlled Substance Sound Labs are using the launch as a platform for their artists to interact with their fans and harness the TwitterVerse to drive content exposure. As someone just latching onto Twitter, the idea of something as easy as tra.kz to identify music related content comes as a welcome way to filter links that I’m simply not interested in. For some solid Bay Area hip-hop, I recommend with my first use of tra.kz The Tones’ “The Movemeant” over at tra.kz/thetones. I’m also enjoying this multi-lingual track from Breez Evahflowin and Indiefeed’s very own Dirt E. Dutch at tra.kz/4wind . Enjoy!