Kimbra
Expatriate New Zealander Kimbra, now based in Melbourne Australia, has just released a diverse set of pieces on an album called Vows.
Her duo with Melbournian based Goyte (Somebody that I used to know) apparently generated something like 20 plus million views on Youtube, and over 400,000 plays on Soundcloud.
Vows as an offering is all over the map musically.
It is produced by Francois Tetaz, with further sonic enhancements from M-Phazes.
My favourite track at this point is a thing called Wandering Limbs.
The track involves a vocal duet with Sam Lawrence, that starts with some very appealing in the distance crusty sounding piano chords. Intro Kimbra at this point with a couple of verses backed sparsely by piano, snaredrum brushes and kickdrum.
The bridge section of the song introduces Sam Lawrence trading phases and harmonies with Kimbra, along with bass guitar and other ambient sounds. As we head into the chorus (at 1:35) the tempo is doubled (quite ear catching), there is more of a full band sound and more harmony layers.
Further verses roll out with an ongoing full lush sound, through again to the chorus and then (at 3:44) to an ambient orchestral sort of beatless zone, that almost becomes cinematic (it wouldn’t be out of place in Romeo and Juliet). Some new instruments like glockenspiel are introduced at this point, an interesting production decision as they weren’t evident at the beginning.
A very classy piece of music with some innovative production and ear twisting magic built in.
Below are 3 clips from Youtube-
- the album version of Wandering Limbs (audio)
- an informal live version of Wandering Limb filmed in Inner Melbourne (vid), and
- Kimbra’s contribution to the Goyte smash hit (vid)
gazlington 