It’s always fascinating to see artists at home working on their craft, uncovering the creative process and elucidating every element that goes into making good music. However, as even Kanye will tell you, for every eureka moment when things start to fall into place and you’re surrounded by a tribe of synchronised head nods snapping to the beat, there’s also the gruelling 27 hours spent locked behind your computer screen EQ’ing a single kick drum over and over again until it’s popping how you want it.
In that way the studio can sometimes be a vacuum in the creative process of music making where you lose touch with what you’re doing and it becomes even more paramount to go outside, interact with your surroundings and find inspiration and narrative in the environment around you.
As the summer season approaches, Pepsi Max has partnered with Noisey to lure some of the world’s most exciting artists on the European festival circuit outside their blacked-out window-less studios and into the sunshine for a compelling vitamin D-infused experiment called ‘48 Hour Mixtapes’.
The challenge? Create a series of brand new tracks, from scratch, in just two days – armed with just a car, a laptop and a cast of trusted collaborators. Using their city, experiences at festivals and the summer vibe as inspiration, the series follows each artist as they embark on a fast paced adventure, using every precious hour to produce a unique, collaborative mixtape.
We’ve got to give it to Pepsi Max and Noisey for the great idea, with the first episode set in London with grime-pioneer JME turning his car into a make-shift studio, creating beats on the go with a variety of musicians, MCs and random surprises.
Watch the video above and listen to the full mixtape here.
’48 Hour Mixtape’ is a 3 part series. Keep your eyes peeled on Noisey for the next episode in Manchester.
