While only released exclusively on Apple Music on August 19, Frank Ocean’s video album Endless has gained a lot of attention, and one of the more odd pieces of the album that has had people scratching their heads is the voice that starts the album off, saying in a German accent: “With this Apple appliance, you can capture live videos.” The voice, which returns at the end to kick off a 7-minute techno track, belongs to Germany’s Wolfgang Tillmans, and the way it found itself on the album is quite unusual.
Tillmans is an acclaimed photographer, but also has a less popular, until now, musical career on his own and with his band Fragile. According to Tillmans, he shared a few tracks with Ocean when meeting about using one of his photos, and when Ocean showed interest in Tillmans’ musical work, he thought he was just looking to sample a few pieces. Finding out that a complete song was used came as a shock.
Having your track featured in its entirety on such a talked about release can be a dream come true. Just last week, Tillmans released his new album, which features the song “Device Control”, from Ocean’s release, and the artist sat down with Pitchfork to give the rundown on how the surprise collaboration came to be. We recommend checking it out!
