Me? I don’t know why he’d leave Cleveland. The only logical explanation in my mind is that he took notes from Stetsasonic and said to himself: New York ignited the base. But in Miami, that’s where that got the deepest bass.

Stetsasonic – Miami Bass by loudersoft

[PURCHASE: In Full Gear - Stetsasonic]

If you take a look at the recently-published list of Time Magazine’s “50 Best Inventions of 2009″, you will find many technologically significant inventions — NASA’s missles, a racing car made entirely out of food, and even a human-powered vending machine. Among these inventions, a surprising (and deserved) addition has appeared: the YouTube remix projects of Israeli musician & composer Kutiman as seen in his prodigious website, ThruYOU. ThruYOU, completed in just two months time, is a sweeping work of musical “found art”, deftly and intelligently remixed into miniature funk masterpieces. Ophir Kutiel, better known to the world as Kutiman, spent weeks searching through YouTube videos of dozens of musicians, primarily amateurs, to find patches of instrumentation and vocals from which he would invent his virtual funk quilt.

While this description may seem at first pedestrian, the resulting videos and songs are anything but ordinary. Bearing little resemblance to the original pieces from which they were culled, Kutiman used his love of funk, jazz and soul music to imbue each of the songs with it’s own life. ThruYOU takes the concept of sampling to another level, creating a recognizable touchstone which changes the game for all time.

You can vote on this item by clicking here to visit Time Magazine’s piece on “The 50 Best Inventions of 2009″ where you can rank ThruYOU’s importance on a scale of 1 to 100.

Kutiman – “Wait for Me”

Click here to download all the tracks from ThruYOU from Loudersoft.

[ThruYOU : MySpace : Time's 50 Best Inventions of 2009]

(Editor’s note: this originally appeared on Loudersoft on 4 March 2009. I’ve updated the post to include MP3′s of the tracks so that, hopefully, it will pull people from MP3 search engines to discover Kutiman and his site. It’s definitely my favorite website of 2009 and, without a doubt, one of my favorite experiences of the past decade. If you’re visiting here from The Hype Machine, please be sure to go back and ‘love’ the songs you love by clicking here. Thanks.)

The full story on Thru-You, video and MP3′s after the jump.

Perennial Loudersoft favorite (and Israeli soul brother extraordinaire) Kutiman has changed the game up inna massive style with http://thru-you.com — wherein he takes pieces of videos from YouTube and remixes them.

But Kutiman doesn’t just remix them, you see — he completely re-arranges them to make entirely new songs, a style often paralleled by artists like DJ Shadow, Girl Talk and producers, including the late great J. Dilla. Unlike the mediocre Dilla copy-catters and the weekend Girl Talk wanna-be’s, Kutiman’s ingenious idea to use freely available YouTube footage of people playing their own instruments and patching them together into the framework you are hearing is solidly game-changing. Thru-You explores the limitless possibilities presented by YouTube for creative people who dream of remixing the world. Others may have attempted something like this, but I certainly haven’t seen it done with such an unnerving depth.

Get there and check this out. It’s seriously amazing. http://thru-you.com

Kutiman – The Mother of All Funk Chords
Kutiman – This is What it Became
Kutiman – I’m New
Kutiman – Babylon Band
Kutiman – Someday
Kutiman – Wait for Me
Kutiman – Just a Lady
Kutiman – About [thru-you]

[MySpace : Thru-You : YouTube Channel]

Purchase Kutiman’s self-titled first album on iTunes here:

Two of my favorite talents in the extensive world of music remain the illustrious DJ Day and Kansas City’s #1 soul brother, soul singer and virtuoso Miles Bonny. DJ Day, whom I have written extensive praises of, wrote on his own blog, Like A Throttle, about how he came to generate this genuinely soul-stirring rendition of “Still Ray” by Raphael Saadiq.

I came home and listened to it, figured out the piano part and played everything else from there. Once I was finished I called my man Miles Bonny to lay down vocals and trumpet like only he can and here it is, free for you.

Word is this may yet still come out on vinyl, but it’s way too good to let collect dust. Enjoy this track and let it fill you with the essence. Keep up with DJ Day over at Like A Throttle.

DJ Day & Miles Bonny – “Still Ray”