Wow… Just Wow. (Dirty Projectors Live Singing)
This is some of the most impressive singing I’ve heard lately. This song illustrates well how music technology has such an odd, parabolic effect on the way we make music. When I first heard this clip, I was certain that the voices were samples being played by a sampler plug-in, triggered by a keyboardist or sequencer. The influence of vocal sampling is clear in the clipped, overlapping way the singers phrase their notes in this song. When I realized that they were really executing those lines right there in the room, I was flattened (and I went and bought a bunch of Dirty Projectors stuff).
Sampling has done wonders to the way we as humans expect to hear voices. From the staccato, repeating fugues of early-90s club music to the dreamlike, parroting robo-choruses evoked by folks like Scott Herren, vocals have become just another textural element to be twisted, bent and spray-painted to our needs. When artists see what digital technology has done to our expectations, then take that same feel and sound and replicate it with actual strings, membranes, vocal cords, and wind, it can really throw us for a loop. Remember the first time you ever saw The Roots nail the perfect choppy SP-1200 hip-hop beat without a single sample in the mix? I sure do!
I love stuff like this.
(Thanks for the video, @questlove!)