20syl – Kodama (official music video) from 20syl on Vimeo.
In a love affair with musical instruments, French producer 20syl teams up with director Mathieu le Dude for a gorgeous music video. As the bass-heavy track shuffles along amiably, hands on musical instruments and other objects reveal the instrumentation – a young hipster’s guide to the electronic orchestra, if you will.
20syl is the producer name of turnablist and sometimes-rapper and graphic artist and music maker Sylvain Richard of Nantes, well-known in his France but getting greater international exposure with this video. He co-directs the film here, applying his graphical sensibilities as well as musical aesthetic.
It’s all charming, and a clever and elegant introduction to the music, which is available as a free-to-stream EP on YouTube. (That is, as long as Google decides to allow such things.)
And, um, yes, for anyone complaining (inexplicably) about seeing a neat and tidy arrangement of musical instruments and grids on wooden surfaces, I’m proud to reward all that bad karma you created in comments last week with – your worst nightmare. (Cue the evil laugh of a blogger, deep inside his cave, lit only by the chilling icy light of his MacBook Pro. CDM presents: the new Things on Wood Video Series! Um… seriously, musical instruments being played by hands on wood apparently sets people off, why?)
Gear spotting time:
Sequential Circuits Six-Trak Synth (hmm, ripe for another Dave Smith remake?)
Akai MPC2000XL
Novation Launchpad
Korg microKORG
Moog Moogerfooger MF-101 Filter
Teenage Engineering OP-1
A Record Runner, an unusual portable VW Bus-shaped turntable playback system
and, of course, various odds and ends
But have a listen to the EP, as it’s rather lovely without the visuals, too:
Indie label On and Records has a lot of great turntable-heavy, hip-hop-flavored eclectic electronic music, and they seem to favour videos as a way to show off process. For some live turntablism, KORG-ism, and serious digital scratch (hello Serato) sampled finger drumming, which the virtuoso C2C live remixing from last year:
C2C – Down The Road – HIFANA Live REMIX from On And On Records on Vimeo.
Via booooooom!, hat tip to The Verge.
Unbelievable the lack of interest in this, guess that’s just the state of things.
Not sure “lack of comments” = “lack of interest” … Maybe this article contains some neat things people would rather enjoy than discus. I watched both videos all the way through, enjoyed them both, read the full text of the article and checked out 20syl’s vimeo channel. That’s a-lot of attention for me to give a blog post and there’s over a hundred Facebook shares already (I actually have no idea if that’s good or not for a CDM post).
Anyway I enjoyed it and was inspired with some ideas to try later.
I was kind of turned off by the fact that it’s not a real ‘live’ performance.
Unbelievable the lack of interest in this, guess that’s just the state of things.
Not sure “lack of comments” = “lack of interest” … Maybe this article contains some neat things people would rather enjoy than discus. I watched both videos all the way through, enjoyed them both, read the full text of the article and checked out 20syl’s vimeo channel. That’s a-lot of attention for me to give a blog post and there’s over a hundred Facebook shares already (I actually have no idea if that’s good or not for a CDM post).
Anyway I enjoyed it and was inspired with some ideas to try later.
I was kind of turned off by the fact that it’s not a real ‘live’ performance.
Unbelievable the lack of interest in this, guess that’s just the state of things.
Not sure “lack of comments” = “lack of interest” … Maybe this article contains some neat things people would rather enjoy than discus. I watched both videos all the way through, enjoyed them both, read the full text of the article and checked out 20syl’s vimeo channel. That’s a-lot of attention for me to give a blog post and there’s over a hundred Facebook shares already (I actually have no idea if that’s good or not for a CDM post).
Anyway I enjoyed it and was inspired with some ideas to try later.
I was kind of turned off by the fact that it’s not a real ‘live’ performance.
I didn’t comment because I was speechless.
I didn’t comment because I was speechless.
I didn’t comment because I was speechless.