5 minutes with Kim Weaver, Alternative, Rock and Folk Editor
Earlier this week, we grabbed a coffee with Kim, Deezer’s Alternative, Rock and Folk Editor to talk obscure community radio, small towns before the internet and a new-found guilty love of autotune.
So how did you end up as a Deezer Editor?
I started in Top 40 radio in Brisbane, Australia, and eventually worked my way into the programming team. It wasn’t really my bag for the music, so I moonlighted at a community radio called 4ZZZ FM that focussed on local music and played some really wonderfully weird shit.
Long story short, I moved to Paris with my boyfriend because we loved the city, I was lucky enough that a gig at Deezer opened up at the same time and here I am.
Why Alternative music?
God. Why do I love alternative music? I don’t really say “alternative” music because it’s, I dunno, since the 90s the genre’s been really piled onto and it’s hard to define what’s really alternative anymore.
I guess it’s because I grew up in a small town and we didn’t even have the internet, so we had Top 40 radio and this radio station called 4CA that played music from the Fifties and that was it. That was all our music. So in Australia in the 90s, Triple J became available in my town and that was it. It opened up a whole new world of music for me, they were playing artists from Australia and my city and stuff like Nirvana and Portishead. It was love from then on.
This is an actual picture of my home town.
So come on, what’s coming up that you’re most excited to listen to?
1) Bon Iver’s 22, A million
It’s funny, because I love ‘33 “GOD”’. He’s gone crazy with autotune, and I hate autotune, I’m always giving Romain shit about how much it’s being used in hip hop, and now Bon Iver’s using it and I’m like I EFFING LOVE AUTOTUNE.
2) Beck’s new album, name TBA
This one’s a bit weird, because ‘Wow’ hasn’t really been super successful, I think it’s going to really divide his fans. It’s kind of a foray into hip hop from him, but in a super Beck way. He was rapping a lot on Odelay, and now it’s like he’s come full circle back to that after the more folky Sea Change. I kinda think he’s like the Madonna of Alternative, he’s constantly reinventing himself, so I can’t wait to see what the album brings.
Ok, this is out already, but I want to include it because I just love it. Her music fuses alternative, lo-fi pop and hip hop and is so full of raw emotion and grittiness. You have to listen to the first track (Blood in the cut) really loud.
Check out more of what Kim’s listening to with her top playlist, and follow her on Deezer here.
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