Kutiman is pleased to announce ThruYOU Too, an album of six new songs he has made by slicing, dicing, and combining found performances by amateur musicians on YouTube. Each track is presented in the form of a new video that incorporates the original clips——to create the effect of so many musicians inadvertently, but seamlessly, playing together. Kutiman releases a first single from the project, “Give It Up,” today at [insert link]; the full ThruYOU Too site will launch on October 1.
The six songs comprising ThruYOU Too combine elements of R&B, soul, gospel and groove. None of the individual performances are by Kutiman; instead, his work has been to diligently sift through YouTube clips, then edit them together into songs. For each composition, Kutiman brought together multiple instrumental performances—by people from various different social, cultural, musical and religious backgrounds—and a bluesy female “lead vocal.”
Kutiman began making music from YouTube videos after a distinct eureka moment in 2009. He was working on new songs in the wake of his highly acclaimed 2008 eponymous debut, which he had made more conventionally: from performances recorded for the album. He was now surfing YouTube looking for new guitar, piano and drum licks, and came across a drum performance he loved, immediately followed by a video teaching him how to download YouTube videos. He fell into a rabbit hole of composing songs by combining the clips, doing almost nothing else for two months.
The result was ThruYOU, which he “released” in March 2009 by sending 20 friends a link to the site. They shared it so enthusiastically that the videos went viral; each racked up over a million YouTube views in the first week, and they have now collectively surpassed 11 million views. Time Magazine named ThruYOU one of the 50 best inventions of the year.
Kutiman’s work has provoked discourse about the future of music. The renowned open source advocate Lawrence Lessig has proclaimed, “Watch this, and you’ll understand everything and more than what I try to explain.” YouTube invited him to perform at the grand opening of YouTube Play exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City. Artists including Moby, Gotye and Maroon 5 approached Kutiman with praise and / or offers to collaborate.
The sensibility and sound of ThruYOU Too, which is Kutiman’s third album, can be traced directly back to his self-titled debut. In a rave review that gave that first album an 8.2 rating, Pitchfork said, “The music is…a mishmash of things from all over the world, the old and the new side by side, a melting pot with a common overarching identity…This comes together in a fantastic, head-spinning debut album, a psyched-up groove monster that can’t decide between vintage and modern and instead just has it both ways…Kutiman takes all his influences, gives them a swirl and emerges with a great debut.”