If you haven’t heard of Kutiman yet you’re about a week late on the latest music sensation to be incubated on the Web. Ophir Kutiel, aka Kutiman, is an Israeli musician and producer that released a project titled Thru You on the Web seven days ago. It has since garnered over a million views and generated a buzz both on the blogosphere and on Twitter.
The project consists of seven music tracks/videos that are made exclusively from video material found on YouTube. Kutiman spent 3 months in his bedroom splicing and dicing over one hundred videos for samples of singers and instruments—from guitars, pianos, drums and harps, to synthesizers, a bouzouki and even a cash register.
The resulting seven tracks which range in genres—from R&B, Funk and Reggae, to Jungle, Afro and Jazz—are quite impressive. The project as a whole is reminiscent of DJ Shadow’s Endtroducing….., a brilliant and seminal album created completely by the sampling of other albums (hear it here).
Apart from the revolutionary music creation aspect, this story also has an interesting social media angle. The entire snowball effect that resulted in over a million views, a crashed website and a fair bit of buzz, was initiated by three people associated with the project. They emailed twenty people in total and it took a life of its own from there. From zero views to over a million in less than 7 days with no marketing dollars, blackhatting or SEO’ing involved. The team around Kutiman attribute much of this to word traveling across Twitter. If this is true, Kutiman may in fact be the first music star to be born on Twitter. There’s no question that we are sure to see other up and coming musicians harness it as well in the future.
Here are a couple of Kutiman’s tracks:
The amount of work put into this seems staggering…
This is truly awesome.
Agreed.
But the notion of crowdcollecting(tm) the most popular and splicing into an interesting new work is creative and smart. We’ll doing a scalable version with broader content at http://w.tEarn.com/
Old newspaper hands know that people love to see themselves in print. Book publishers print collections of famous people. All similar notions with creative value-add.
Not true.
You use my face in one of these retarded videos, especially for personal profit, you better get a release. Just because something’s put on youtube doesn’t make it fair game for people to use.
Yes. NO FUN PLEASE! NO FUN FOR ANYONE!!!
you are so wrong. this guy doesn’t make a dime on this. he even created a realy nice hyper linked credits list on the site, which you would have noticed if you would have bothered to visit the original site.
Wasn’t the line about email 20 people referring to getting permission from the people in the videos? You can unwad your panties now.
…but Youtube profits?????
Actually – when you put something on youtube – youtube owns it.
It’s funny it is like the reverse version of the Professional teenagers. One guy plays all the characters
http://www.yout...h?v=Iv1tQU0roNk
did he do any pitch shifting…..?????/
This guy ROCKS!
Very impressive particularly in terms of the time required for someone to put this together.
Incredible. My brother and I are blown away… plus we just tweeted it… so there you go… another 1000 views.
Awesome.
I listened to DJ Shadow’s Endtroducing all through college, great album. Kutiman’s work is truly inspiring.
Why is this on TC? This is Digg/reddit material.
It’s here because it’s about twitter. First music start and blah, blah, blah. Got it?
The man is like the Beat Digger of YouTube. He’s done an amazing job of making something beautiful and creative. He sampled a bit of an MPC drum video I made in #6, so he was definitely digging for drum samples.
Siiiick!
+1
UNREAL.. that takes talent and commitment
pure genius
Absolutely incredible. It would be one thing if the music was just okay, but the songs are actually awesome.
Watching all the videos give you a big sense of how interconnected we all are…
I posted this to MetaFilter and sent the link to BoingBoing among others, last Wednesday. I’m from Israel, but I’m not associated with Kutiman, and haven’t been asked by anyone to promote this; I was just so blown away that I had to tell the world.
Viral promotion etc. is all well and good, but it only works if the thing you’re promoting is making people go HOLY SHIT THIS IS AWESOME. Something as good and revolutionary as this is very rare.
This reminds me of the guy who grabbed a bunch of default.mp3 files (musicmatch i think) from p2p and cobbled them together to make songs.
It ranged from people apologizing to significant others to i miss you monologues but had a DJ Shadow groove to it.
Amazing stuff.
Awesome!
Those that can, play. Those that can’t, DJ…
oh, this guy can play. and better than you think.
check out his myspace before you talk
This isn’t DJing, idiot.
The guy is gifted.
Absolutely.
The Kutiman playlist here :
http://www.mirp...045&lang=en
Very impressive!
wow, it’s really cool, by sampling the songs. I love it.
very cool! Funky tunes…. plus, looking at his MySpace page is a lot more interesting than looking at a FB profile. I know MS can be messy but I prefer the uniqueness of his page over a blue & white profile.
Absolutely incredible and downright staggering how much free time this guy has in his life.
“From zero views to over a million in less than 7 days with no marketing dollars, blackhatting or SEO’ing involved. The team around Kutiman attribute much of this to word traveling across Twitter.”
the reason is pretty simple: it was AWESOME. on so many levels. almost* every aspect of this project was top-notch, starting with the work itself, the branding, website design, etc.
my lesson from all this is that the trully awesome, innovative, well thought, well executed, well designed idea/services/entertainment/products don’t need all the bullshit-seo-marketing efforts.
* apart from hosting the vid localy – at first, rather then embedding them, which was an epic blunder – It’s Ironic, there are rumors it actually cost them quite a bit in bandwidth charges – if true it probably is a well deserved lesson to those guys – if you use youtube the internet-gods will want you to host the resulting vid on youtube.
hey eshefer
on behalf of the branding/web presence team, thanks for the warm compliments.
i just wanted to point out that hosting the video locally was a conscious decision, as was moving it later on to be embedded on you-tube.
its interesting to see that in a broader perspective it actually served the project very well.
A friend of mine just sent a link to Thru-You.. I guess it’s gaining publicity everywhere now.
I really hope this Kutiman gets even more of this well-deserved attention, his creativity is absolutely brilliant. The videos are not only well-produced, the music flows amazingly well. I really hope someone helps this guy become a professional producer.
This is awesome – there will be lots more mashups like this. It’s inspiring to see someone pull things together with such rhythm and timing. I am sure that this guy is a very talented and clued-in musician as well. Great job!
I wouldn’t call this “Endtroducing”, but it’s definitely a great tribute to the genius of Emergency Broadcast Network.
See clips at:
http://www.yout...h?v=U_H4b7-eZNM
http://www.yout...h?v=t1TCyEjyxFw
http://www.yout...h?v=6dh0iEkDEkU
and keep in mind that they were doing this in 1990! And have continued doing it:
http://www.yout...h?v=5cFuG7YzVzw
And they influenced others:
http://www.yout...h?v=nLu7p9bTJ84
http://www.yout...h?v=paVAsE-AFlU
http://www.yout...h?v=7cix5OSO5Y0
Who in turn made their impact on younger artists:
http://www.yout...h?v=LzoR0nfWPCM
(Having a multi-decade pedigree doesn’t diminish this amazing work by Kutiman of course!)
and then there’s AddictiveTV from UK:
http://www.yout...h?v=5QQCuLe8QOs
It’s a lot of work, and neat, but it isn’t really “music”. Just a guy with a good ear and a lot of time to spend in front of a computer. Genius? That’s stretching it a bit far, IMHO.
Just a guy with a good ear? Not music?
Do you have any sense of wonder left in you?
Why don’t you consider it to be music?
ThruYou takes Youtube clips, mashes them up to create mashed up, crowd-sourced musical awesomeness. Listening to these tracks (especially’ I’m new’ and ‘Someday’ was so inspiring I got goose bumps. Our world continues to fly forward-transformed by the liberation and flourishing of people expressing their souls, personalities and talents at scale without any rate limiting controls over their mashed up distribution.
It’s just going to get better and better and better. True freedom is coming and all closed, corrupted, controlled and manipulated systems are going to die one by one. We are seeing this happen faster and faster all around us. In their place it is up to us to create and support the open systems, technologies and services that make the world and platforms one transparent interconnected organism of human creativity. We can and solve the great problems of our day through this very creativity and through this very openness.
As Dave Morin said in a comment about my post to Facebook live from 30,000 feet in sky: “It is the life. Our life.” This is a great transformational time for us to be alive and make an positive impact.
This guy is amazing. I’m surprised he got all the pieces done in just 3 months.
http://www.Snazl.com
WTF my head where spinning this is incredible is anything and everything joined by an unknown rhythm this is creativity at its best AWESOME MAN.
The music composition is coo’ but Juice Lee is the glue.
Wow! Pretty amazing.
Amazing achievement, but was it worth a lifetime of carpal tunnel?
I guess if anyone needed further justification to throw away the Microsoft Movie Maker software that comes with Windows, this is it … carpal tunnel be damned
From India
Anjali Sen
Neat, I’ll take an old skool DJ though.
‘the revolutionary music creation aspect…[of creating music]…completely by the sampling of other albums’
…um, creating music from sound samples is not exactly revolutionary. in fact, it’s not at all revolutionary. ever heard of electronic music?
Actually, most electronic music uses a lot more than just samples of existing albums.
I only have three words to say…”Hot to Death”
We’ve been listening to a lot of Kutiman’s work at the Scred office lately, even purchased some of his other music. The concept and execution behind Thru You is absolutely top notch and blew us away when we saw it. Most importantly it’s an incredible reflection of our world today and how it can piece together bits from anywhere in the globe. So it’s revolutionary on two levels: the idea of using video clips as samples to construct a whole orchestra and that the source of that material is people “like you and me”. Awe-inspiring.
This is a groundbreaking achievement and is one of those rare things where you can see it has immediately laid down the path for things to come.
@Roi Carthy, I think you hit it when describing Kutiman as the first musical star to be born on Twitter. That’s where I discovered him. And that’s the third revolution here.
If Twitter-born starsare even half as good as Kutiman, I’ll be one happy camper.
quilting is craft, painting is art.
this is a quilt.
Some quilts are intense and emotional. Some paintings are a guy pissing on a canvas.
The songs are more craft than art, but the idea is what makes it amazing and artistic. Also, if this weren’t so well done, the idea wouldn’t have had legs.
there is a difference between a musician, and the the technician who crafted the master copy.
the latter may be very skilled and admirable. but is still not a musician.
A quilt like this one: http://www.cdpl...t-th-739631.jpg or this one: http://www.theq...ts/486/main.jpg.
“quilting is craft, painting is art.
this is a quilt.”
art is art. the tech used is a just a tool when making art.
art is not defined by the method of tech you use (be it quilt, color on canvas or NLE video editing). art is defined by the cultural-intellectual achievement that said art represents. on that level Kutiman is up there with the best of them. I don’t mean “elvis” – I mean Picasso, Duchamp – those guys.
“there is a difference between a musician, and the the technician who crafted the master copy.”
even if this was true (which, in some cases, it most definetly ISN’T), it isn’t relevant to Kutiman.
“the latter may be very skilled and admirable. but is still not a musician.”
check up “kutiman” on google. but if you don’t – trust me on this, he’s pretty good as a “normal” “legitimate” “musician”.
the thing is that to get to the level of execution that kutiman got to here YOU HAVE TO BE A MUSICIAN, and damned good one at that.
sure thing. so the word processing expert who pulls together a collection of short stories and formats them attractively is a writer.
No, the word processing expert who writes a good story himself using excerpts of less than a sentence from other writers is a writer.
Anyway, you’re trolling a “what is art” argument, so don’t get your underwear in a bunch. There will always be “traditional” (= appreciated by you) art produced by traditional artists to help alienate you from your children.
“so the word processing expert who pulls together a collection of short stories and formats them attractively is a writer.”
if the resulting work resonantes as an important milestone in culture and has a fundamental effect on people – as a direct result of values injected by said writer- then he would be making art too. yes.
Why am I getting the feeling I’m talking to an Eliza program?
Are you honestly saying it’s the same thing? Dude didn’t make a mix tape. Your analogy describes a mix tape.
This work is amazing, unifying and visionary. And its not strictly a “mashup” either. Kutiman is a hypercubist.
http://quantumc...-theory-of.html
C’mon! Has no one here heard of TV Sheriff & the Trailblazers before?
They’ve been doing (IMO, better) music video mashups like this for years…
http://www.yout...e.com/tvsheriff
Sorry, this is more than just a “music video mashup”, and neither is this about tvsheriff and/or Trailblazers. This is about Kutiman, and the great project he is making.
This is amazing, reminded me of StSanders videos which were taken off the youtube, however youtube got loaded with wannabe StSanders, and now, they are going to be loaded with fake, wannabe Kutimans!
here’s a cool one: http://www.yout...feature=related
Just beautiful.
His source material is what I find interesting; most electronic musicians (yes, people who make music from samples or a laptop are just as valid as those who can play an oboe, are usually more popular and often more interesting). He’s made a greater whole from found objects, not at first intended to be used in collaborations. It is innovative, even if he’s not the very first to have done it, he’s bringing attention to the idea. In any case what’s the point in slagging off other people’s creativity? Also, there’s a full playlist over on the routenote blog, if you want to watch it there…
Ah. Got distracted halfway through that first sentence
You should also check out Swede Mason on YouTube for ridiculous mashups. Some of his stuff is NSFW though, you have been warned…
http://www.yout...user/swedemason
newspaper editors do this everyday. put together things that other people wrote so that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts etc etc.
that does not mean they wrote the newspaper.
great!
the Jewish brain in power
why do people insist on critiquing topics they do not understand? instead of trying to steal a musicians thunder by either criticizing or downplaying or even drawing parallels to shadow (cali represent!)…why not just say, gee that’s compelling, so compelling over 1million people found it so. bottom line what he did wasn’t easy and pretty damn new to the web. show some love and put the intellectual ego aside. people on tech crunch need some help in this area…jumping off the horse.
I wonder if he’s licensing this under creative commons (or if he even can do it).
We’d like to feature him on FrostWire
Beyond impressive. If nothing else than at least for the number of hours required to do this.
Wow. Think about the time required to prepare even one of these. Finding the videos, tracks, and then folding them together as seamlessly into a new composition is just mind blowing.
By far the most musical and visual impressive produced album I’ve seen lately. MENTAL!
“If this is true, Kutiman may in fact be the first music star to be born on Twitter.”
Not to take anything away from what this guy has done — I really do think it’s a amazing — but saying he’s the first “star” to be discovered on Twitter… just because a ton of people saw his stuff doesn’t mean a music star was just born, whatever that even means.
The link spread virally because it one of those things that you just have to show someone else. I don’t think Twitter can take credit for breaking this guy. It would have most likely spread like this if Twitter hadn’t existed yet.
Some people (above) have questioned whether thru-you is ‘music’ or is ‘art’…
It most definitely is both. – If people are reacting to the ‘many-authors’ attribute of these works as somehow diminishing Kutiman’s achievement, they are totally missing the point. – Kutiman is a musician of considerable skill, and what he has done, is actually a highly evolved crowd-sourced composition that displays a good deal of humility on his part. It is the work of an artist who can see beauty and value in the scattered leaves of myriad YouTube videos, and he weaves them into multiple works of sublime art, in the same way avante guard artists from the 1960’s and 70’s juxtaposed ‘found-objects’ on boards or canvases.
His works, to coin a new term, could be called a musical ‘Folkshomily’… celebrating the mundane and the disconnected… and making stars of ordinary people… like the enigmatic woman on track #3 who soulfully repeats “I am Blue, I am Blue…” and the equally engaging young woman on track #5, who sits with a baby on her lap while playing a keyboard, singing: “…Someday I will find my soul… I, gotta have one too”…
Featuring these aspirational people and their precious human fragments is a gift to all of us… and; if the ‘form’ of this art is hard for all to comprehend, then it is yet further indication of its uniqueness and cutting-edge status.