Kid of Earth: I Found Music

We try so hard to forge our own futures, take the right steps, while feeling guilty that we didn’t ‘leave every stone unturned’ along the way. But unlike the self-creation that the modern world expects of us, the music we love isn’t forced, but rather found. We first hear it at a friend’s house, on a car radio, or through the ambient ‘notes’ of daily life along the back street.

Raph (Kid of Earth) Pierre was one of my first friends on Soundcloud and he is one of the platform’s guardian angels: always engaging with listeners and supporting all genres of creativity. When I asked him how he makes his amazing tracks, he self-deprecatingly said, “It’s an immense frustration that I do not play any instruments. I tinker with samples and sounds and try to put together something that stands.”

That his elaborate and rich soundscapes are found and forged is something short of amazing to me. Perhaps KoE is a new kind of musician… Why should musicians be people that are trained to play ‘real’ instruments? Like a painter, KoE meticulously layers his tracks through minute sonic brush strokes. The overall composition is a deep history of found sounds transformed into something totally new. It isn’t limited by genres and expectations but is the result of simply loving music.

As an example of KoE’s vast talents, check out this alternate version of ‘I Found Music’ called ‘Funky Back Street’ below. After hearing my rendition of sax and bass, he freed himself from the original funk format and created an avante-garde flow of ebbing rhythms that speak to the lyric’s theme. Being a more conservative ‘instrumentalist’ I could never have come up with this engaging version that seems to bend space and time… Kudos to Kid of Earth for teaching us that making music is not just about playing, but is equally about listening.