Red Bull Music Academy Revisits Best From NYC

The Red Bull Music Academy released a four-minute film capturing the greatest moments from its 2013 stint in New York: from intimate studio sessions with Four Tet and James Murphy, to grandiose celebrations of NYC music culture in some of the city’s most outstanding venues.
It’s been almost four weeks since the 2013 Red Bull Music Academy would wound to a close with a night of bumping house and experimental electronic music at Brooklyn’s much lauded new dance club, Output. But the beats and memories of those five weeks are still fresh. New York felt like a natural home for the Academy, with its rich cultural history, and array of world-class music venues big and small.
Create, Collaborate, Celebrate captures images and sound from both the private collaborative workshop and the iconic events presented throughout the month of May, from the thigh-quivering United States of Bass night which showcased America’s bass music pioneers and “offered both a tactile dance-floor experience and a history lesson” (The New York Times) to the spectacular celebration of 12 years of New York’s most influential indie label of the past decade, DFA Records. The music from these events and more can be rewound at rbmaradio.com, alongside exclusive interviews and curated playlists.
A plethora of very special artists and musicians graced the lecture couch during the Academy. The participants heard talks from such heavyweight artists as Q-Tip and Blondie’s Debbie Harry and Chris Stein. Pioneering disco and electronic music producer Giorgio Moroder spoke (“We were between Italy and Paris, vacationing. I was doing my crossword puzzles, having a great time. But then Daft Punk came and pulled me back in.”), as did DFA Records and LCD Soundsystem head honcho James Murphy (“I realized that making people dance had a point that had nothing to do with art. I mean that in the most positive way. It’s like food — if they’re not eating it, you’ve screwed it up. And if they’re not dancing, you’re just not doing a good job.”). All these talks and many more are available at redbullmusicacademy.com/lectures.
At the Academy’s HQ in Chelsea, three floors were remodelled as a musical wonderland, with help from architect Jeffrey Inaba – encapsulating a glittering complex of communal areas and brightly hued workspaces, all designed to nurture creativity and mutual inspiration. Now that the Academy has left town, the legacy of the space will carry on, as the recording room, lecture hall, and radio broadcast booth will all form the Red Bull Studio New York – hosting trailblazers of sound and vision for years to come. You can get insights into the design concept behind the space in a short clip attached to this article.
The studios saw collaborations between rising producers, vocalists, DJs, and instrumentalists from 29 countries. To hear the results, keep an eye on the Red Bull Music Academy website and Bandcamp profile, where this year’s Various Assets compilation – the Academy’s “audio yearbook”, featuring the best songs recorded during the two fortnight-long terms – will be released later this summer.
In the meantime, music lovers can dive deep into the archive of Daily Note music newspapers, 75,000 physical copies of which were distributed at stores, venues, cultural hotspots and subway stops throughout the city every day. The thousands of words devoted to a non-chronological retelling of New York’s wildly diverse musical history are available for download at redbullmusicacademy.com/dailynotenyc
Aspiring bedroom producers and vetted professionals alike can also find inspiration from Red Bull Music Academy’s new series of music tutorials, Studio Science, in which music makers from across the spectrum of sound grant rare insights into their creative process. Videos including acclaimed electronic artist Four Tet breaking down his live set-up and Austrian synth wizard Dorian Concept explaining the secrets behind the popular microKORG keyboard can be found in this attached content compilation.
 
Since 1998, Red Bull Music Academy has visited a different city each year, transforming buildings to house musical stories and sessions. It’s a parallel universe, where the unlikeliest meetings of minds inevitably occur; a place where the musical innovations of past and present are re-defined every day and night. The next edition of the Academy will be held in a part of the world that has yet to host an Academy. Applications will open in January 2014. Stay tuned!