Turns out a fair few of us were offline for the week-and-a-half he was in vogue…
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John Seroff: In case you were offline for the week-and-a-half he was in vogue, Kutiman is the nom du net of the Israeli musician who peeled hundreds of little-known performance clips from YouTube (riffs, recitals, freestyles, synth demos, girls in bedrooms singing into cameras), then beat matched and arranged them into an album of rejiggered found sound. Songs on the Thru-You URLP run the gamut from rock, R&B, drum’n’bass, reggae and folk; the accompanying music videos provide meticulously crosslinked references to the finished songs’ sources. Time Magazine called this approach one of the great inventions of the year, but that smacks of a justifiably over-enthusiastic writer making a pitch. The Avalanches, Girl Talk, the underrated and prolific 41 and a hundred other DJs before have all played at otographic collage; what makes Kutiman unique is his abhorrence of commercial recording; his samples hail from virtual unknowns and his work is distributed free on the web. But Thru-You isn’t an exercise in artistic egalitarian humanism; the stubborn adherence to utilizing only YouTube artists would amount to simple branded gimmickry if Kutiman were not so remarkably adept at making exhilarating crazy-quilts from his dozens of moving parts. By avoiding irony or ostentatious auteurism, Kutiman allows the original performers natural joy to shine; the perspective and musicality he brings to the table makes each of the songs on Thru-You smack of true collaboration. “Wait for Me” is an excellent showcase of these principles; although the original materials might seem unconnected and are often performed without obvious skill, Kutiman unerringly unearths their innately musical moments. A young would-be Roger Troutman, a string trio, a guy knocking out a funk beat, a classical guitarist, a motley crew of instruments, emulators, instrumentalists and unintended spoken word are all diced by a thousand shining cuts, fanned to a bright flame and shuffled back together to ignite on contact. Thru-You and ‘Wait for Me’ are indicative of a type of reckless idealism, ingenious artistry and musical proof of diligence that hasn’t been seen on the internet since Dangermouse knocked out The Grey Album. I’ll lay even money we should get Kutiman’s “Crazy” sometime in 2010. I can’t wait.
[10]
Ian Mathers: Now this is how you use vocal processing. Kutiman sounds a lot closer to Roger Troutman than to T-Pain here, and he’s also oddly menacing as he croons his way though… well, actually, I’m having trouble parsing the actual words, but it sounds fantastically paranoid and foreboding and more than a little addictive.
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Martin Skidmore: The ultra-autotuned vocals are pretty horrible, but the music is at least a vaguely interesting hybrid of styles, mostly a kind of rock take on a hip hop soundscape. I got bored with it after a while, and the vocal stayed annoying.
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Alex Macpherson: Love the combination of big, generous bass with delicate found-sound details; love the sense of restlessness and the way Kutiman doesn’t just putz around with “interesting” experiments but parlays them into a satisfyingly crafted groove; absolutely adore the space-age pimp vox which have been popping up everywhere this year, from Dâm-Funk to 2000F & J Kamata to Mariah Carey.
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Chuck Eddy: No idea if people-in-the-know classify this with Daft Punk or where, and part of me thinks it’s just an intermittently funky beat with baloney on top. But there’s at least a modicum of lushness to the flamenco-or-Segovia solo, and the Gothic intro is borderline ominous, and the AutoTune (or Vocoder, or whatever) has more Roger Troutman in it than T-Pain’s does — when he starts intoning the word “heartbreaker,” it’s a direct Zapp reference. It’d be better with Chromeo’s sense of humor, though. And mostly, it just feels diffuse.
[5]
Anthony Miccio: Is this Roger Troutman’s Makaveli moment? Quite a posthumous comeback — overlong, but way more commanding than those “’93 Remix” tracks on my Zapp best-of.
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Rodney J. Greene: Troutman-turned-tunefree talkbox twaddle tops tiresome Timbo 2.0 ticking. The best, most unexpected element is, ironically, the most staid, the acoustic guitar used for splash and solo being the only part where Kutiman shows the slightest hint of imagination.
[4]
Matt Cibula: Hello future, whatcha knowin’? This is homegrown funk the way I like it: ever so slightly greasy.
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