Kanye West featuring Bon Iver - Lost in the World. Whaat? Fantastic. My favorite track so far on the new Kanye CD, this song may be the most effective indie music/rap collaboration I've heard. Building naturally from Bon Iver's autotune-heavy 2009 release, Blood Bank, Lost in the World uses its guest star with surprising necessity. Rather than a novel and perhaps ironic cameo, Bon Iver's looped voice is used to set the emotional tone - a simultaneous build-up and resolution to Kanye's ego-fueled, emotional torrent of a record. This type of confusion-in-resolution recalls the last track from from Bright Eyes' Cassadega, Lime Tree (at least to me) - an attempt to create something that feels large, substantial and meaningful, but one that is mired in its own wanderings. How can you create a resolution to an album that's about heart-wrenching upheaval and self doubt? Here, on Kanye's track, Justin Vernon's encoded voice starts out the track and later becomes layered over what appears to be a choir-like R&B loop, with only a short verse from West himself. It's like indie-rap Daft Punk. I'm not the biggest Kanye fan in the world, but damn! every new record he puts out takes the thrasher to genre conventions, creating something that feels fascinating and new. Each album could be taken as a strand to be built on, to create an entirely new brand, not just of rap music, but musical in general. Apologies for the lack of mp3s. I'm still a blogging novice. Anyone know how to add music tracks to a Blogger account?
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