Koushik - Out My Window

to be released September 30 on Stones Throw; digital release in August

• Stones Throw
• July 15, 2008

Four years after his first release on Stones Throw, the Canadian-bred artist known as Koushik presents Out My Window, his official debut.

His backbeat is set by ‘90s-era “dusty fingers” beats and breaks. There’s a touch of that “post-Dilla off-kilter drum programming.” But his music’s similarities to traditional hip-hop end there. Koushik is essentially a pop music singer-songwriter – and not in the contemporary sense of the word “pop.” Rewind to the ‘60s, when fancy production alone did not an artist make. Despite his lush, beautiful arrangements, Koushik’s melodies could be stripped down to their essence and accompanied with a single acoustic guitar. But they’re not...

That ethereal singing comes from the same guy laying down the music. It’s a swirling, reverb-drenched creation schooled by Phil Spector’s “wall of sound” and colored by a palette of flutes, harpsichords and mellotrons. Though Koushik’s “backing band” dwells within his SP-303 sampler, “they” sound like a dream team of late ‘60s LA’s Wrecking Crew sessioners and that same era’s New York jazz and funk cats vamping together on some experimental shit when the engineer leaves the booth for a coffee break. To keep this dream sequence going, Koushik’s vocals would emerge non-distinctly from the air conditioning shafts, drifting up from somewhere deep in Capitols Studios. It’s a strange sound that never made it to tape forty years ago, but Koushik has channeled it out his window and onto this album.

The timing couldn’t be better...

With all of those “beat diggers” raised on Golden Age hip-hop wandering into psychedelic rock and progressive folk, Koushik offers a point of departure. His unique approach stands as the reason Stones Throw adds him to a roster alongside the likes of Madlib and Dilla, Gary Wilson and YNQ. Hopefully, Out My Window gazes into the future as well as looking nostalgically at the past – and finds a space amongst the classics that you listen to many times over, finding new things to love with each listen.

www.stonesthrow.com/koushik