Brit Music Scene

Keane Experimenting - Kanye West & K’Naan Collaborations

Posted: 18 Jul 2009 02:30 PM PDT

When I think of Keane, my first thoughts aren’t ones of innovation and experimentation. I suppose it was quite fresh to do away with their guitarist and rely on vocals, keyboards, and drums to provide the music that has touched so many of us. But since their first album in 2004, it’s been business as usual, with little deviation from the expected except Tom Chaplin’s dalliances with drink and drugs. I don’t think anyone expected that.

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What I do associate Keane with is pop music of the highest order; easy-listening, uplifting, and joyful. Hopes and Fears has that in droves, Under The Iron Sea is a mixture, and Perfect Symmetry keeps the same vein going but with a more retro 1980s feel. It seems the changes made to their sound for the last album has encouraged Keane to experiment further.

Speaking to NME at the Ibiza Rocks festival, frontman Tom Chaplin spoke of a couple of current collaborations in the works which signal a move away from the out-and-out pop music we’ve come to expect. Could it be that Keane are about to embrace hip-hop and start rapping about bling and bitches?

“We worked with Kanye just for one night, but we’re hoping to get some more stuff done with him in the next few weeks. But he’s obviously a very busy man, and we’re quite busy as well at the moment. But we should have something really, really great to show for it hopefully later this year.”

“The K’Naan thing is pretty much finished and complete, the rest of it should come together later. But if it doesn’t, I think we’ve still got something good to show for our efforts.”

“It's a new thing for us and it’s great, I think we found out with the last record [Perfect Symmetry] that we can do that. I think we’ve discovered that you can actually really push it and be experimental and get something really fresh and different out of it.”

Kanye West is clearly a collaboration whore, having worked with pretty much everyone you’d care to mention. But by working with both Kanye and K’Naan, Keane are clearly signaling their intention to move away from what we know them for and embrace new genres and new styles of music.

It makes me wonder what the next album is going to sound like. Would a hip-hop collaboration sit comfortably next to a 1980s-style pop song? Is Tom Chaplin suddenly going to break into a rap midway through a heartfelt ballad? It should be interesting to watch, but I’m not sure how it will go down with Keane’s die-hard fans.

[Photo Source: Newscom]

Post from: Brit Music Scene