Students record album with grant from Hutton Honors

Junior Gabrielle Cherney was relaxing in a friend’s living room when he pulled up some music on Youtube — catchy music that was vaguely familiar to her.

She was shocked when her friend, senior Sam Owens, revealed the music was the effort of his roommate, senior Robert Rossman, and his friend, senior Ari Kaplan.
For music that was mixed on the computer, Cherney said she would have expected it to sound more forced.

Instead, she said she found Rossman and Kaplan to have “a really good sense of musicality. It sounded great and flowed really well.”

What Cherney heard in this Bloomington living room was recorded in a living room 2,100 miles away in Thousand Oaks, Calif.

The music is for the upcoming album “Popular People,” which is being co-produced by Kaplan and Rossman.

As students in the Recording Arts program, they’ve often recorded other artists’ work. Now, they’re working on their own.

With music written and mainly performed by Kaplan, with his friend Brock Cardiner on drums, and the recording process controlled by Rossman, the album is well on its way to release in December.

“We have really good creative chemistry,” Rossman said. “It sped up the process.”

The duo dubbed this past season “The Powerhouse Summer,” as they both worked 80 to 100 hours a week on their professional endeavors and this creative project, Rossman said.

“We wouldn’t have done anything else this summer,” Rossman said.  
“It was the right kind of busy,” Kaplan said.

While the Hutton Honors College provided the grant to record the album during the summer, the pair still needed funding to mix, master and press the CDs, as well as pay for distribution costs — so they turned to Kickstarter.com.

The website allows people to pledge money to projects. Pledges go through only if the fundraising goal is met.

“What can I say about Kickstarter — it’s a cool little platform,” Rossman said.

Kaplan and Rossman surpassed their goal of $1,500 by $677 this past August after wooing backers with “Ari Kaplan” headbands, copies of the album and promises of personalized letters of recommendation written by Kaplan. While Kaplan has never charged for the approximately dozen EPs he’s released in the past, he decided to see if people would fund this album.

“They overwhelmingly liked the idea,” Kaplan said. “It was cool to see.”

With a tagline of “one step away from being over-the-top,” Kaplan and Rossman said they sought to produce extremely high-quality music that is enjoyable for the
audience.

“It doesn’t take itself too seriously but is still musically respectable,” Kaplan said.

The album will be released on Rossman’s own label, Hot Ass Records.

“We’re super thankful to all parties involved,” Rossman said.