I've Got to Hear More of This!

March 12, 2009 11:56 PM

I've just discovered Kutiman on YouTube. Does anyone else come close to his mashup genius?

He is an Israeli musician who apparently is new to his craft, but his work is awesome! The samples linked are of the R&B/Funk variety, not sure if he does anything else, but I love this stuff. If you know anyone else even close to being this talented, please advise. Listen to this and this and this. If this is the future of music, I am all aboard!

posted by konig to media & arts (18 comments total)

Well, there's rx of course.
posted by shii at 12:17 AM on March 13

You may want to check out this FPP.
posted by Happy Dave at 12:44 AM on March 13

Check out Girl Talk.
posted by TungstenChef at 1:37 AM on March 13 [2 favorites has favorites]

Christian Marclay made a musical composition out of scenes of people playing music in movies in Video Quartet. This is not nearly as pop as the work of Kutiman, but I actually like it better (I will acknowledge this is a matter of taste rather than fact). His album More Encores creates acoustic sketches of a number of artists using turntable manipulations of their work, where the kind of manipulation says something about this artist (for example the Hendrix track is all extreme pitch bends and swoops like a whammy bar, the Cage track is simply four records each cut in quarters then Frankensteined together, and left to play on a phonograph with no human intervention, the Armstrong track is scratched on a 78 RPM player (maybe even a wind up Victrola?), and he finally does a tribute to himself, where all you can hear is the fact that something is being manipulated on a turntable, but you cannot recognize the material at all).

Before this whole mashup craze, John Oswald was doing Plunderphonics, and some of his combinations and re-interpretations are amazing, and often quite funny. In News Orb Jam he sampled James Brown and re-arranging it to say "don't" "Hit me!" "back" (the track is also interesting because strictly speaking it is not James Brown samples, but samples of tracks made using James Brown samples, seeming to make the point that these other artists had actually added something in their re-arrangement of his work). He also did an excellent re-edit of a number of murder mystery books on tape in A case of death. Here is his re-working of Hello, I Love You, among other tracks by the Doors.

What these two do that I particularly enjoy is that they significantly comment on the material they use, rather than just putting it in some juxtaposition.
posted by idiopath at 1:47 AM on March 13

Kutiman's stuff really reminded me of early Public Enemy/Bomb Squad when I saw it.
posted by No-sword at 3:03 AM on March 13

To expand on what watercarrier said, this guy didn't do a mashup (usually described as some DJ who takes 2 disparate songs and mashes them together). this is sampladelica music, a form of electronica. It's been around for a while. There are tons of artists in this category, check out:

DJ Shadow
The Avalanches
Jurrasic 5
UNKLE
Cut Chemist
Kid Koala
Fatboy Slim
Amon Tobin
posted by Mach5 at 6:17 AM on March 13

try Audiobytes for Autobots
posted by mannequito at 6:31 AM on March 13

Coldcut - Journeys by DJ: 70 Minutes of Madness.
posted by driveler at 7:01 AM on March 13

girl talk is the king.
posted by timory at 7:11 AM on March 13

Girl Talk's album Feed the Animals (#14) is available for free legal listening.
posted by samsm at 7:41 AM on March 13

Soulwax/2 Many DJs
posted by neblina_matinal at 7:41 AM on March 13 [1 favorite has favorites]

Sonny J - Can't Stop Moving, among others.
posted by suedehead at 8:19 AM on March 13

Alex H comes close.
posted by flatluigi at 8:51 AM on March 13

DJ Mei-Lwun
posted by geekyguy at 9:29 AM on March 13

Thanks to everyone who provided information and links. I have looked through quite a few of your recommendations and found some that I enjoy. I am a little partial to funk/r&b, which I think may be why I am partial to Kutiman, other than the fact that it is just so damn well done.

I am curious, though. There seems to be somewhat of a controversy as to whether these self expressions are legal. What's the general feeling on that? If they are considered illegal, what is the purpose of spending the inordinate amount of time that it must take to make one of these gems? I understand the pleasure of self-accomplishment and even the cudos from fellow aficionados for work well done, but is there really any future to be had other than appreciation, like money?
posted by konig at 5:44 PM on March 13

1. For the sheer pleasure of creating it.
2. To play in a local or underground music scene, where no one likely to care will notice.
3. For the very small chance that you will get noticed. Danger Mouse did this when he created the Grey Album, which was illegal as hell and will probably never be published. Now he's getting to create hit records because of it.
posted by TungstenChef at 10:43 PM on March 13 [1 favorite has favorites]

noone's mentioned Osymyso?
posted by progosk at 2:16 AM on March 14

microhouse sometimes does a lot of sampling. example.
posted by juv3nal at 1:22 AM on March 16