Artist Intro | Kutiman

Oliver Brown
Mon, 22 Aug 2022 17:01:18 +0000

Revered composer, producer, filmmaker and multi-instrumental polymath, Kutiman, is set to release his 6th studio album, Open, via Kartel Music Group - a crunchy twelve-track psych-pop trip around classic soul and Middle Eastern psychedelia.

As comfortable scoring orchestral suites as he is bridging sounds from Fela-inspired horn arrangements, electric era-Miles funk, classical Indian ragas, or even chopping environmental field recordings, Kutiman’s journey to his latest full-length, Open is a story of complete absorption in sonic fusions. Having achieved worldwide acclaim for his role in Netflix music documentary, Presenting Princess Shaw, alongside his Thru You projects, where he wrote new songs editing together clips of amateur musicians on YouTube, reaching ten million views in only two weeks (voted Top 50 Inventions of 2009 by Time Magazine), Kutiman has applied an impeccable attention to detail over a series of releases from 2016’s inventive “scuzzy desert epic” (The Guardian) 6am, 2020’s psychedelic feast, Wachaga and 2021’s Surface Currents, a 45min ambient outing of weightless piano drones and modular synths.

Kutiman aka Ophir Kutiel moved to Tel Aviv at seventeen to study jazz at the prestigious Rimon music college, but it was a convenience store job where he first heard Parliament, Amon Tobin, trip-hop and jungle that provided his greatest musical education, and the foundation of his latest album Open.

Moving back to the centre of the country, after nine remote years living in a kibbutz in the Negev Desert, Kutiman (who plays every instrument on the record) set out to balance the laid back psych funk present throughout his catalogue, with multi-instrumental techniques he acquired whilst studying in isolation. The result is a twelve-track commute into the depths of Kuti’s diverse influence base.

Watch the official video for new single ‘Fresh Haze’ here

Follow Kutiman:

Facebook

Instagram

Twitter

Youtube