Post for: #kutiman (11 Posts)

Updated November 2016 after Netflix acquired the film - clip added, post expanded with details from interviews that followed the theatrical run.

Tonight I attended a festive pre-release screening of "Presenting Princess Shaw" at the Petach Tikva Museum of Art cinematheque.

Remember when I wrote about Thru You Too a year ago and mentioned Princess Shaw? There's a documentary. And it's extraordinary.

The film was first screened at the Jerusalem Film Festival in July, followed by its international premiere at Toronto in September. Tonight was a festive pre-theatrical release screening. Writer and director Ido Haar was there to introduce it and take questions.

The Setup

Ido Haar is a longtime friend of Kutiman. His previous films include 9 Star Hotel (2006), about Palestinians working illegally as construction workers in Israel, which was nominated for a European Film Award.

Update: I've added the new album to thru-you.org - downloads, metadata, and links to all the original source videos.

Another update: more details and links.

Last month Kutiman released a remix project for Thru You Too: ten international producers, each interpreting his YouTube mashups through their own lens. The project launched with its own website and spans cumbia, dub, house, hip-hop, dark disco, future jazz, and more.

The concept is recursive in the best way. Kutiman found strangers on YouTube and stitched them into songs. Now other producers are taking those songs and making them into something else entirely. A remix of a remix of found footage.

"I'm New" (Thru You)

Copia Doble Systema (Global Bass / Cumbia) - Norwegian DJ Copyflex started this project in Copenhagen in 2009. They call it "cumbia vikingo." High-energy tropical bass with syncopated percussion and digital brass stabs. Supported by Diplo, Gilles Peterson. Listen here.

Update: I've added the new album to thru-you.org - downloads, metadata, and links to all the original source videos.

Five and a half years ago, Kutiman blew my mind. Today he did it again.

Thru You Too dropped today. Six new tracks, same magic: unrelated YouTube videos of people playing music in their bedrooms, practice rooms, garages. People who never met. Kutiman found them, cut them, stitched them together into something larger than its parts.

He told Yahoo why it took five years:

It took me a few years to get back to the point where ... I'm doing it freely. From an honest place where I'm not trying to bring the next thing, and just do it for fun.

The first single, "Give It Up", dropped on YouTube September 12 and hit a million views in days.

The vocalist is an aspiring singer from New Orleans who goes by the name KarMaRedd or "Princess Shaw". Her videos barely break a hundred views. The day after the single dropped, she posted a thank-you video. Someone had emailed her: did you hear the remix of your song? She didn't even know how to pronounce Kutiman's name. "It was so surreal," she says. "Almost in tears."

"No One In This World" followed, published about a week ago.

The remaining four tracks + companion website (thru-you-too.com) launched today.
The full playlist is here.

Six female vocalists anchor this album - R&B, soul, groove. Warmer sound than the original Thru You.

Remember the Star Wars crawl on the Tel Aviv City Hall escalators?

Turns out Kutiman followed the artist - Dover D while he decorated them:

A week ago Kutiman performed at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City. YouTube invited him to play at the grand opening of YouTube Play: A Biennial of Creative Video.

The lineup: OK Go, The LXD, Megan Washington, Jarbas Agnelli. And Kutiman.

Kutiman did a live mashup of Brahms' "Hungarian Dance #5" with a string quartet from Juilliard and players from the YouTube Symphony Orchestra. Classical musicians accompanying webcam clips of strangers.

greg.org captured the moment:

There was something in those next few moments, even though I was technically watching it on TV, when the reality of a string quartet performing Brahms live alongside Kutiman's webcam YouTube videospinning sank in. And I thought that this thing could just. not. happen. anywhere else BUT inside the heavily painted rotunda of the Guggenheim.

Kutiman Orchestra and DJ Shadow performing live in Ganei Hataarucha.

Can't believe I got to witness this!

Full circle. TechCrunch compared Thru You to Shadow's Endtroducing - both built entirely from samples. And now they're sharing a stage in Tel Aviv.

Edit: Found videos! Embedded below.

They did "The Mother of All Funk Chords" with Elran Dekel (of Funk'n'stein) on vocals and the brass section killing it (Shlomi Alon, Sefi Zisling, Yair Slutzki).

Karolina covered for Songdreamer performing "Just a Lady" live.

And the moment I've been waiting for: "I'm New"

• Juice Lee's rap section (I couldn't figure out who the rapper was)
• Elexis Trinity and Mandy's parts beautifully sung by Habanot Nechama (Karolina, Dana Adini, Yael Deckelbaum)

Videos