ThruYou, an album made entirely from YouTube clips, far greater than the sum of its parts

ThruYou is a seven-track dub and breakbeat album created entirely using samples from user-contributed YouTube videos. It’s the coolest thing you’ll see today, and not just because of the remix nature of it, but how it takes these amateur contributions and by contextualizing them draws out their best elements. Not so much the little clips cut into rhythm hits, but the solos. Check out the third track, “I M New“: Not only is the rap break almost entirely uncut, the coda matches a cut up piano performance perfectly with one girl looking into her computer’s webcam and singing what she hopes will someday be a song on her professionally produced album. And now it is.

Also worth noting: A ton of interesting synths and oscillators on display in track four, “Babylon Band“, a track I would embed except that the artist Kutiman actually uses a custom Flash page, not a standard YouTube interface. Still, lots of good stuff here for synth nerds.

Did I mention the songs are great? They are.

1. [Anonymous]

   Those were exceptionally awesome. Thanks!

2. [Garr]

   Very awesome, I actually liked a couple of songs (even though I’m really not into “that” kind of … errm… electronic? music.)

   But then I suspect he was heavily inspired by this brilliant dude: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzqumbhfxRo&feature=channel_page

3. [David Carroll]

   Thank you olafthekid @ # 00001001b

   Worked for me. Fresh sound waves and photons for the morning commute… Yea!

4. [w000t]

   #1 / Enochrewt:

   If you click on “get playlist” it will grab an m3u file which is just a text file with urls for mp3s of all the tracks.

5. [Scuba SM]

   The original site is down; bandwidth issues, apparently.

   ZULUDADDY:

   There’s no paywall there. Click the free button, and it makes you wait for a bit before your download can start.

6. [olafthekid]

   here’s the songs both mp3 and flv videos included.
   http://rapidshare.de/files/45835295/Kutiman_-_ThruYou.zip.html

7. [fuzzyami]

   this is so awesome.

8. [zuludaddy]

   @SCUBA SM -Thanks for the heads-up there, and thanks to all for all the extra linkies.

9. [artbot]

   That is completely awesome. The song “Someday” is a real gem, with the mom singing to her baby. Love it.

10. [MCM]

    I love the video where he got the drums for the first song, this guy rocks!

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FX_84iWPLU

11. [Enochrewt]

    Is there a way I can get this in a more listening friendly format? Are they selling the album? Or is it available for download anywhere?

12. [zuludaddy]

    Thank you Olaf @#9

    Or should I say Takk?

13. [zuludaddy]

    Spoken too soon – moneywall for access

    Thanks for the effort & kind thought, all the same.

14. [JeffreyMartin]

    This is awesome. I’ve been waiting for something like this. Now we’re living in the future, and I like it

    How many albums, feature films, and unknown works of art can be crafted out of the hours of youtube cruft?

15. [Tom P]

    The videos have now been uploaded (by a third party) to YouTube, which is nicely circular…
    http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=downwithutube&view=videos

16. [TheBlessedBlogger]

    Anyone know the youtube address to the original videos? I’d like to see the originals in their entirety and see some of the musician/singers other work. I liked the mashups but I’m wondering if they got permission to use these vids and why they didn’t credit the artists at the end of the video.

17. [sofauxboho]

    Torrent link:
    http://www.demonoid.com/files/details/1821813/?rel=1236241196

    DropBox link:
    http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/40434/Kutiman_-_ThruYou.zip

18. [TheBlessedBlogger]

    Scratch that, he did give them credit in a seperate video. I’d still like the links to the originals though and couldn’t find them on his site. He says the links are beside the video in the About vid but I don’t see em. I’ve got a killer headache and the site hurts my eyes so if someone else sees where he posted the links to the originals let me know.

19. [Rob_Haines]

    I’m not a great fan of Youtube, and this really isn’t my kind of music. Which makes it all the more odd how utterly spellbinding I find this project, and how after listening once I had to have it on mp3 so I can bring a little chaos to my cubicle at work tomorrow.

    Thanks for the links Much appreciated!

    Rob

20. [joelphillips]

    Click on credits while a video is playing. Gives you a clickable list of toobs.

21. [mp3player]

    Very cool! This reminds me of another documentary called “Playing for change” where the directors, travel the world, filming and recording various street musicians and then take all the clips and create one song:

    http://revver.com/video/864341/mark-johnson-jonathan-walls-playing-for-change-movie/