A running column on the players and performances that come through PlanetBYear — artist reads that place a musician in the wider world, and takes on why a single clip is worth your ear. Reviewed by a curator before it runs.
His playing style spans jazz, classical, and progressive rock genres. He utilizes a signature two-handed tapping technique alongside slap and pop bass methods.
He is a self-taught erhu player who performs a variety of music, including original compositions and covers of movie, video game, and anime soundtracks.
His style combines fingerstyle and percussive guitar techniques with modern electronic and orchestral production.
She is recognized for her unique, powerful vocals and acoustic guitar performances, which include a mix of cover songs and original music.
He creates layered, bass-heavy soundscapes by manipulating his voice through vocal looping and sound effect processors. His background includes singing in an alternative rock and rapcore band before transitioning to his solo live-looping setup.
The band plays a self-defined genre called brass house, which has been described as electronics-less electronic dance music created by a brass trio.
He plays the handpan, an instrument associated with energy work and alternative healing. His early musical background includes joining a military marching band at the age of eleven.
His style infuses classical violin training with a love of popular music, video games, and comedic stunts. He utilizes a loop pedal to create layered, multi-part arrangements live.
She performs contemporary pop, classical, and cinematic music on the violin, combining classical training with energetic street busking.
His style is deeply rooted in 20th-century American boogie-woogie and blues, drawing inspiration from pioneers such as Jerry Lee Lewis, Albert Ammons, and Pete Johnson.
He plays neo-classical and contemporary classical music. His background includes classical lessons as a child, followed by a period of MCing, DJing, and producing garage music before returning to the piano.
His music spans classical guitar, Romani music, and fingerstyle guitar. He describes his performances as sound ceremonies and refers to himself as a troubadour.
Wright is credited as the first major drummer to play on five-gallon plastic buckets instead of a traditional drum kit. He developed a signature technique of using his foot to lift the bucket to alter its sound patterns.
Ray King is reportedly a street musician who has been documented performing on buckets and garbage pails in the New York City Subway.
Ray King
Ray King transforms a subway platform into a full drum kit by using his left hand to ride a steady, metallic pulse on a trash can while his right hand drives the bass and snare grooves on plastic buckets. He layers these rhythms seamlessly, dropping in rapid double-stroke rolls and clicking his sticks together in mid-air without ever losing his foot-tapping tempo. This split-hand independence creates the illusion of multiple percussionists playing in perfect sync.
Karim Kamar
Karim Kamar transforms this public space by layering a relentless, rolling left-hand arpeggio under rapid right-hand runs and high-register trills. He demonstrates remarkable rhythmic control as he transitions from a gentle, flowing melody into a highly syncopated middle section, where both hands punch out fast, alternating chords with absolute precision. This physical independence between his hands allows him to build a massive, layered soundscape entirely on the fly.
Too Many Zooz
The drummer anchors this subway performance with a relentless, syncopated groove on a single drum rigged with cowbells and blocks. Over this steady beat, the saxophonist layers a highly physical performance, kicking and stepping in time while shifting between deep, percussive bass lines and rapid melodic runs. His precise tongueing technique creates a sharp, staccato articulation that locks seamlessly into the drum's driving rhythm.
Allie Sherlock
The guitarist grounds the arrangement by layering a steady fingerpicked rhythm with a foot-tapped percussion beat on his cajon, providing a rich acoustic foundation entirely on his own. Allie Sherlock builds on this framework with exceptional vocal dynamics, shifting smoothly from a breathy, conversational register in the verses to a powerful, belted chest voice on the high notes of the chorus. Their shared timing is impeccable, culminating in a natural crescendo where the acoustic strumming intensifies just as their vocal harmonies lock into place.
Karolina Protsenko
Playing over a synthesized backing track, Karolina Protsenko physically embodies the electronic rhythm, bending her knees and stepping in time with the beat. Her bowing technique mimics the track's production, shifting from sharp, staccato strokes during the verses to broad, continuous pulls for the soaring chorus. This coordination allows her left hand to navigate the fingerboard smoothly while she keeps her eyes on the surrounding crowd.
Charles Berthoud
Charles Berthoud builds a rich groove by first recording a syncopated slap-and-pop bassline, then stepping on his loop pedal to lock it in. Over this foundation, he layers a rapid-fire percussive rhythm using muted thumb-slaps before introducing a bright, melodic third voice played with precise two-handed tapping. The magic lies in his flawless timing and hand independence, transforming a single four-string bass into a self-contained rhythm section.
Daniel Waples
Daniel Waples establishes a steady, resonant pulse by striking the handpan's metallic notes with precise fingertip taps and thumb slaps to create a rhythmic foundation. Flavio Lopez layers long, bowed violin swells over this syncopated rhythm, letting the natural reverb of the concrete bridge archway blend their acoustic tones. Playing entirely by ear, the duo maintains constant eye contact to coordinate their shifts in dynamics, allowing the melody to build and recede organically without the aid of a metronome.
Rob Landes
Landes builds this street performance layer by layer, starting with a plucked pizzicato bassline that he records and loops with his foot pedal. He then bows long, sustained chords to establish the harmony before adding a third layer of rapid, rhythmic bowing. With this self-made backing track running, his hands are free to play the main melody over a dense and highly rhythmic accompaniment.
Dub FX
Every layer, the kick, the snare, the bassline, the pads, begins as his own voice, caught live in the looper and stacked in real time. Nothing is pre-recorded. The entire band is built in front of you from one mouth and one pedal.
Henri Herbert
A public piano meant for idle passersby suddenly carries a full walking bass in the left hand while the right improvises on top: two independent parts, one player, at speed. The tell of the real thing is that the bass never once trips.
Eliott Tordo
Two strings, no fingerboard, and he finds the exact pitch of the melody by ear alone. On the erhu the slides between the notes carry more of the tune than the notes themselves; the vibrato is doing the singing.
Marcin
Watch the right hand hold three jobs at once: the riff, a kick-and-snare slapped straight onto the body of the guitar, and the low drone underneath, so a whole Led Zeppelin arrangement folds down onto six strings without ever thinning out. The swing is the hard part, and it survives.
Larry Wright
Larry Wright coaxes a dynamic range of tones from simple plastic buckets by rapidly alternating between the sharp, cracking rims and the deep, resonant centers. He occasionally tilts the buckets with his feet to alter their pitch and resonance on the fly, adding a layered, melodic quality to the rhythm. The performance peaks with a rapid, sustained roll where his hands blur, yet every strike remains crisp and perfectly locked into the pocket.
Estas Tonne
There is no setlist. The piece grows out of one repeated figure and keeps folding new lines into it until a street corner sounds like a film score. Listen for how he lets the noise of the crowd settle into the tempo instead of fighting it.