Triple ‘Tube Tuesday: ortoPilot
covers Oasis, Massive Attack, & Hope, with 22 more to come by Christmas!
December 13th, 2011 — 12:16 pm
After five years of streamed video coverage, three original albums, and eight LPs of downloadable covertunes, this year’s Advent Calendar from well-known YouTube coverfount ortoPilot (aka Manchester-based multi-instrumentalist Matt Hutchison) is a thing of joy and wonder: 25 coversongs, released one a day until Christmas, and though many of them come pop-polished and high-concept, already I’ve fallen in love.
ortoPilot’s folkier, stripped-down covers, represented here by takes on Tracy Chapman and Oasis, are delicate, yet bluesy. His Cure cover is a lightly electronic folkrocker, his Coldplay cover is quietly fluid and dynamic; self-comparisons to John Mayer are apt. But his incredible acoustic poptake on Who Am I To Say, a song he discovered “back in the MySpace days”, owes more to Marc Cohn, underscoring our whole existence as a folkblog. And his Massive Attack cover, endearingly framed within a gifted animation from equally pseudonymous ladyfriend AcidPeach, falls neatly between the throbbing synthpulse of the original House, MD theme and the fragile, atmospheric indiefolk cover from Jose Gonzalez that was all over the blogs an eon ago, taking the best from each, and leaving beauty in its wake.
Check out three favorites from this year’s calendar below, then head over to ortoPilot’s YouTube project page to catch up on the first 12 days of Christmas, and to subscribe to daily updates as the countdown continues.
ortoPilot: Don’t Go Away (orig. Oasis)
otroPilot: Teardrop (orig. Massive Attack)
ortoPilot: Who Am I To Say (orig. Hope)