808’s And Heartbreaks

I think I may be mildly obsessed with the new Kanye album (btw – I am 100% buying it once it’s available for purchase). It’s plays quite differently for me than much of his previous work. It’s lower-tempo, much more electronic, but still as epic as ever. If you needed further proof of Kanye’s skills as a vocalist (effects aside) in addition to as a rapper, there’s plenty of it on this disc. The repetitive beeping rythm of Say You Will makes no secret about what’s in store on the rest of the album…low tones, deep, brooding beats, all underlying Kanye’s catchy melodies and powerful lyrics. Evidently the album chronicles Kanye’s reaction to the death of his mother, so the tone certainly fits.

I really like what Kanye did with RoboCop; it’s one of the lighter tracks on the album (compare its orchestral arrangements to the cello at the beginning of Welcome to Heartbreak). It’s got a really cool sample of RoboCop’s machienery moving that’s used in a pretty innovative way; the mechanical sound feels like it’s a tone filling out the melody of the track.

If you juxtapose this album with the up-tempo, party-ready tracks on Graduation and Late Registration, most of it is much more of a rainy day or late-night-after-party playlist. The deep, repetitive beats make it ripe for remixing though – I can’t wait to hear the club versions of some of these tracks that will surely emerge.

Groundbreaking Album Production and Promotion Model

Today, in conjunction with Nettwerk Music Group and Universal Music Canada, Indaba Music launches an incredibly innovative program for progressive hip-hop artist K-OS.

K-OS’s new album is not being released until the spring, but starting today, musicians around the world will have the chance to download, mix, and re-imagine the stems for all 11 songs on that not-yet-released album. This is an exciting opportunity in and of itself, but the best part is that K-OS is going to pick a winner from each contest to be awarded $1,000 and to be included on a companion album (also being released by Universal).

At Indaba, we’re completely psyched about this for 2 reasons. One, this is an amazing, unprecedented opportunity for undiscovered musicians to collaborate with a major artist and actually get serious exposure by winning a spot on a major release. Two, this program demonstrates the extraordinary flexibility and depth that new technologies are adding to the traditional album production and release process. In the past, people wouldn’t have a chance to interact with the artist or his content until it came out of the studio and was packaged for distribution (whether that’s in the form of a physical CD, digital download, etc.). Here, we’re demonstrating that an artist can engage fans even before an album is finished, building stronger connections with them, and hopefully creating a larger economic pie for everyone who has a stake in the album’s success.

We’re running a similar program with Third Eye Blind concurrently, so I think it’s on;y appropriate to wrap up this post by saying that Indaba is incredibly blessed to have found such progressive, forward-thinking artists that would enable us to demonstrate the utility of the technology and community we’ve built.

Here’s a link to the full press release about the K-OS program.

Bayo the Dog

It’s been a while since I’ve posted, but how could I ignore this face forever? I’ve never had a dog, and neither has 

Indaba, but now, Bayo has joined our family. Bayo is a 6-month-old Rhodesian Ridgeback mix, and he enjoys long walks, watching the folks at Indaba work, eating, and barking for constant attention. You can read his entire story here, but I wanted to share a few photos…