Customer Reviews

Passing By Behind Your Eyes [Explicit]

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My cousin, being an avid fan of southern blue grass music, classic American rock music and live jam bands, was quick to dismiss most electronic or techno music as that "repetitive, annoying stuff they play at clubs.... It's not real music" he said. Later on that night, I happened to stumble upon Pretty Lights. If this isn't one of the best examples of "real" music, then I don't know what is.

"Pretty Lights" is the alias for the musical synergy of electronic music by Derek Vincent Smith and the live dynamic drum beats of Cory Eberhard. These two come together in live performances, producing a raw hybrid type of electronic music that is ever so innovative. This mix of live percussion, and synthesized music samples is a method very similar to that of Karlheinz Shockhausen, who was the first to come up with the concept of combining electronische and concrete music. This mix can create a new world of aesthetically pleasing sounds that one may have never experienced before.

In this album, "Passing by Behind Your Eyes (2009)," Pretty Lights takes their use of sampling and mixing to entirely higher level than before. They take vintage, classic samples and beats, and bring them alive again through the process of synthesization and fusion of these various ingredients. Getting this melodic batter just right is a difficult task that seems to come natural for Pretty Lights, as evidenced by their success and popularity in past work. Pretty Lights mainly uses the monome and the Akai MPD32. They use these digital controllers to produce the unique sounds and beats we hear on this album.

The songs that seem to resonate most with me when thinking of their album are "Shortcut/ detour" and "Sunday School." "Shortcut/detour" takes classical instrumental sounds such as piano melodies, and stringed instruments and morphs them into a more new-age sound, combining that with short vocal samples, creating a cutting edge, catchy song that is sure to get everyone's head bobbing.

"Sunday School" is a clear example of the predominant influence hip-hop had on Derek. There are various samples from major artists in the hip hop community such as The Notorious B.I.G., etc. One of the major lines looped throughout "Sunday School" is sampled from his song, "Dead Wrong." But as you can see, Pretty Lights takes this sample and weaves it into his work, creating something fresh and new. The use of samples in this album reminded me a lot of The Orb, in "Little Fluffy Coulds." The Orb, an English electronic music group known for spawning the genre of ambient house, was too known for their use of samples.

Electronic music is an up and coming genre that welcomes advances in technology and innovation with open arms, but at the same time, embraces the past. The awesome thing about it is that much of electronic music plays off of or works with pre-existing materials, finding its foundation in past musical hits, nature, instrumental sounds, etc. Electronic music can present you with something new, but at the same time strike a chord, or inspire memories, emotions, due to its sentimental value. That is exactly what has stuck out to me in regards to Pretty Lights. The first song I happened to hear from them, not on this album, "Finally Moving," samples a song I recognized from my high school days, I was instantly drawn to them and wanted to hear what else Pretty Lights had to offer. If you have not listened to or experienced the musical talent of Pretty Lights yet, I strongly encourage you to download it and give it a try on [...].

Derek Smith, better known as Pretty Lights, is an American electronic music composer. His music can be described as electronic, glitch hop, funk, hip hop, soul, trip hop, and dubstep. His music is able to cover such a wide variety of genres because Pretty Lights uses a lot of sampling including clips from songs that span the above genre list. On September 21, 2011 Pretty Lights performed at the Charlottesville pavilion. In his performance he utilized various technologies and music styles that have influenced or can be classified as technosonics.

Smith's sound is generated by synthesizing sample and organic beats using a Novation X-Station(virtual analog synthesizer, audio interface, and MIDI controller), Monome (family of interface devices for computers), and the Akai MPD32 (MIDI over USB performance pad controller). But when in an actual performance Pretty Lights uses two Mac Book Pros running Ableton Live 8 as well as two Akai MPD32. First looking at the X-Station the first description is an analog synthesizer. The Moog and Buchla are the original analog synthesizers, and the X-Station could have never come about if not for the accomplishments of Robert Moog and Donald Buchla. The Music Instrument Digital Interface or MIDI was developed as a standard, single keyboard that could control a rack of synthesizers. Ableton Live 8 is a music production software which Smith controls using the digital controllers above. This software was created through the evolution of the work of Max Matthews in Bell Labs when he developed the original computer music program, Music I.

Technosonic artists include Daft Punk, Girl Talk, John Oswald, and others that are all of a similar music style to Pretty Lights. Plunderphonics, coined by Oswald, is a type of sound collage music where various clips of songs are pieced together and overlapped to form a new composition. Pretty Lights has taken this idea of plunderphonics to a whole new level. Smith's heavy reliance on sampling allows him to form a combination of glitch hip-hop beats, buzzing synth lines, and vintage funk and soul samples. Not only does he use samples from other songs but he integrates them into his own music to create the entirely new piece. Most of if not all of Pretty Lights custom music comes from electronic and computer generated sources discussed above.

The concert itself was masterly crafted and executed. Pretty Lights successfully combined the audio of his music with the visual appeal of a light show. The two components were fully integrated into one compelling experience. Pretty Lights meshed together the beat of the music seamlessly with the pulse of the lights. The lights and music were so well paired that if only one were to be played at a time you could practically visualize or imagine the other component. He was able to bring together music from the past and present decades through his sampling style. With song writing note being a issue Smith is able to quickly come out with new music as well as sample other currently popular songs into his show appealing to his audience even more.

Pretty Lights, Derek Smith, is a growing artist on the electronic music stage and his accelerating popularity does not seem to be slowing. With sampling the selection of songs Smith can use only continues to grow with time allowing for him to continue coming out with new and interesting music. As the technology used to produce music continues to become more advanced one must look back to what could be considered the founding fathers of computer /electronic music in Max Matthews, Robert Moog, and Donald Buchla.

Pretty Lights has to be one of my top five live acts, but in recording, he's just as good. Songs like "Keep 'Em Bouncin'" and "Can't Stop Me Now" are simply euphoric. I can't get enough of this stuff. I'm too excited to see him this summer at All Good Music Festival and Electric Forest.