The delightfully quirky indie joy of Pomplamoose

Could making the musical acquaintance of a pair of talented multi-instrumentalists from California, real life couple Jack Conte and Nataly Dawn, who have named their combined entity Pomplamoose after a delightful play on the French word for grapefruit pamplemousse, possibly have made my week, month and year just a short while back?

You’d better believe it.

It took just one tweet, for their inspired, skilfully executed mash-up of Pharrell Williams Oscar-nominated song “Happy”, and Daft Punk’s “Get Lucky” and “Lose Yourself to Dance”, which came complete with a visually inventive video which was filmed in one take using a variety of clever camera angles and multimedia savvy.

Here’s what I had to say about them in Now this is music #23:

* This week’s unexpected musical highlight comes courtesy of the talented twosome of Jack Conte and Nataly Dawn, collectively known as Pomplamoose, whose talent for extraordinarily infectious mashups and clever visuals on a shoestring budget (they used a projector and some white foam board) came to the fore with the following tuneful hybrid which they explained this way:

“For the verse of our mashup, we used the chords from “Get Lucky” with the vocals from “Happy.” For our prechorus, we used the vocals from both “Happy” and “Get Lucky.” The chorus of our mashup is the chords and vocals from “Happy” and the vocals from “Lose Yourself to Dance.”” (source: screenrant)

It sounds and looks amazing and you’d do well to check out their other minimalist-inspired work which is as equally impressive as this brilliant effort.

What I find so delightful about all their music – yes I have downloaded everything – which reminds me of one of my favourite duos of all time The Bird and the Bee without being in any way derivative of them, is its delightfully quirky, off kilter, vibe.

There’s a playfulness to the glorious jazz, rock and electronic-infused pop music they create, a sense of whimsy and fun that doesn’t for one second detract from the skilfulness of the music they create, whether it’s recording together as a duo, as soloists or Conte’s more commercially-oriented work which gives rise to some of the best ad soundtracks I have ever heard.

Conte is also an internet entrepreneur, leaping into the crowd founding sphere, of which Kickstarter is probably the best known occupant, with a twist on the usual model called Patreon where instead of sponsoring one project, you essentially become an ongoing patron of an artist’s work, providing them with a consistent income stream.

This is how Conte describes this clever twist on the usual crowdfunding system:

“The other players in the crowd funding space aren’t providing regular, consistent income to content creators. There are literally tens of thousands of people who create regular content on the web and have millions of followers. Kickstarter is not appropriate for a blogger who writes weekly articles – he doesn’t need a big chunk of money, and he has no big project to use it for. He needs monthly income, and Patreon brings crowd funding away from singular one-off projects and into the realm of regular content creation.”

It’s the sort of approach that seems to be emblematic of Conte and Dawn, two artists who aren’t content to take the creative road most travelled, happy to be themselves with the talent to bring it off in spectacularly pleasing fashion.

They’re a breath of fresh air in a musical landscape where too often the idiosyncratic and the quirky are shoved out of the spotlight in favour of the big, showy cookie-cutter names and I am excited at the chance to get to know them better and enjoy their one of a kind music in all its quirky glory.

And here’s an interview with Pomplamoose which gives an amazing insight into their art, their business model, and the way they’re able to make a living online via Youtube and iTunes …