Friday, May 12, 2006

In-Tune: David Last


Style: Electronica

"David Last was raised in University towns in the Midwest, the son of a professor and a standup comic. In Austin Texas, as a kid at the end of the 1970s he was intensely interested in drawing, music making, and projected super 8 images. At this time he discovered Kraftwerk and a love for rhythmic music, as well as having an appetite for orchestral film soundtrack records. As a teen living in Madison Wisconsin in 1984, under the influence of electro hip hop from New York City radio, he began making electronic music with a small analog synthesizer and a couple of tape machines. His organic-electronic musical approach is an expression of his interest in many musical forms, and an expression of his sense of humor. Not satisfied with just the squared-off robot rhythms of most electronic music, most of his tracks have a natural rhythm feel that comes from his own percussion playing. Not happy with the purely synthetic palette chosen by many electronic artists, David arranges string parts, brings in friends to play instruments, and plays instruments himself on his tracks, chopping up the end result and re-arranging everything into hypnotic new hybrids. His use of textures, rhythms, or sounds from non-western music is a natural outgrowth of his location, in New York City, where the entire world co-exists in the same space. To ignore these sounds, foods, and culture is difficult or impossible in this town. As such, he doesn't feel these sounds are "exotic" sounds at all... merely the sounds of people living their lives in the city, listening to their music, bumping into one another, and creating a new kind of community." - David Last

Visit the website:
http://www.davidlast.net/

Available at:
http://www.theagriculture.com/

Highlights:
Cat-Silver
The Push Pull