RockArt: Kutiman – Mother of All Funk Chords

I can’t believe it has taken me this long to write about Kutiman, as over the past few years I have probably shared his work on YouTube with more friends than any other artist. The combination of his musical skills and video editing are amazing, and while Mother Of All Funk Chords is my favourite track, just about everything he does is essential viewing. Everytime I watch this my mind boggles at the effort required to really nail it.

41-year-old Ophir Kutiel is an Israeli musician, composer, producer and animator who is more well know as Kutiman. In 2009, he released ThruYOU, an online music video project that features a mix of samples from YouTube videos. It’s weird watching it, as you’ll often see bits of clips that you’ve watched previously, but the way he melds them together is truly remarkable. When first released it had more than 10 million views in the first couple of weeks. Time Magazine named it one of the “50 Best Inventions of 2009”, and YouTube invited him to perform at the YouTube Play grand opening at the Guggenheim Museum in New York.

In a June 2009 Internet radio interview, Kutiman described how he first conceived of ThruYOU: “At first I took some drummers—before I had the idea about ThruYOU, I took some drummers from YouTube and I played on top of them—just for fun, you know. And then one day, just before I plugged my guitar to play on top of the drummer from YouTube, I thought to myself, you know—maybe I can find a bass and guitar and other players on YouTube to play with this drummer…”. The entire project took a couple of months and the results speak for themselves.

Since ThruYOU he has worked on a bunch of audiovisual collages and also composed his own work and worked with other artists. Check out his YouTube video channel for more of his amazing work.

RockArt is a series of posts that looks at the more than just the musical side of things: videos, photos, logos and artwork. You can find more here.