This summer we have an unexpected collaboration on the way from the House legend MK – also known Marc Kinchen – and Premier League’s Chelsea football players Thibaut Courtois, David Luiz and Antonio Rudiger.
The idea was born from a simple concept: what happens when you combine the skills of three world-class football players with the Detroit icon’s own studio nous? The project was managed by director Michael Williams who also shot the accompanying short film right outside of Shepperton Studios in London, United Kingdom. This setting is where MK recorded the three players as they struck a football against various surfaces in order to use the sounds as samples in the track.
“We have been taking some samples using the players and balls, trying to get as many weird, crazy samples as possible to incorporate into my music,” MK said, explaining the concept. “It was surreal to work with these incredible players to kick the ball to create the sounds and textures I wanted to record for the track.”
This was also new and exciting for the Chelsea stars who had never partaken in the creation of a song.
“This is something new for us players,” – David Luiz. “We all enjoyed working with somebody as talented as MK.” For Williams, too, the unique shoot brought its own share of challenges: “The number of moving parts, it’s an experimental process with multiple cameras so I had to keep MK interested sonically while keeping our players engaged physically. I wanted MK to run this ‘studio session’ so the challenge was real balance versus time,” Williams reveals. “And hoping my crew didn’t get hit in the face from all the rebounding balls.”
According to Williams, the aim of the project was to combine athletic talent with the studio process. “I wanted to use the best of their talent and put them in each other’s world,” he said. “I thought the culture clash of MK’s chopped aesthetics with players’ peak athleticism would make for an interesting film.”
The track is slated for a release later this year alongside Sony Music. Keep a look out for a video release as well.
