Recently, there has been a trend of revitalizing old R&B sounds into a form of EDM with the use of DAW Vocal Chopping Techniques. With Vocal Chopping, DJs like Kygo are able to take recordings of past songs and incorporate them into a completely new song. This webpage will explore this reinvigoration of older R&B music through these DAW techniques, and show how this revamping of older songs contributes to Jason Stanyek and Benjamin Piekut’s idea of the intermundane, or the “new arrangements of interpenetration between worlds of living and dead.” (Stanyek & Piekut, 16). This concept emerged when production techniques like sampling, digital instruments, and recording became digitized using visual means of editing rather than aural. Kygo displays this concept by utilizing newer software to create an EDM remix of Whitney Houston’s “Higher Love.”
Reinvigoration/combination of genres is possible in EDM music thanks to new technologies and softwares, such as DAW, that allow DJs to make their own versions of old songs and put them out into the world with ease. The purpose of these new versions is often to pay homage to the original, rather than create a new entity, which is what Kygo was doing in his creation of “Higher Love”.