Linkin Park’s Mike Shinoda has released a new music and art project called ‘ZIGGURATS’ – you can listen to the four-track project below.
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The multi-instrumentalist launched a new music/NFT artwork collection on the Tezos blockchain on Thursday (December 2), followed by a traditional release on streaming services on Friday (December 3).
“‘ZIGGURATS’ is a music+art release, available as NFT + on streaming,” Shinoda said last month on Twitter. “The NFTs are in ‘profile pic’ style. When you mint one, you get a randomly generated character as your ‘album cover’.”
Five thousand NFTs were designed by Shinoda, each with their own exclusive cover art for ‘ZIGGURATS’ and music, and sold out within minutes on ziggurats.xyz.
You can take a listen to ‘ZIGGURATS’ below:
Announcing the unique project on his Discord last month, Shinoda said: “I’ve described it to some people as a ‘song that’s not a song’. But it’s also an EP that’s not an EP, an NFT that’s not an NFT, and an art project that’s more than just a picture.”
Inspired by projects like CryptoPunks and Bored Apes, Shinda “liked the idea of a program taking elements and mixing-and-matching to create different outputs. Creating collectible pieces – each one unique. But I wanted to do it with music”.
“Thankfully, I’ve created a lot of material this past few years. I started sifting through all the beats and sketches I’ve made, looking for connections between them,” continued Shinoda. “Similar tempos, similar keys, cool parts. All the best bits got poured into one long session. The track ended up feeling like some of the ’90s hip hop I grew up on, so I decided to start writing some verses.
“The outcome is a six and a half minute musical project, made of layers. The vocals are the same on each output, but the music and cover art are unique. I’m calling it a ‘generative mixtape.'”
‘ZIGGURATS’ is Shinoda’s first new material since the release of ‘Happy Endings’, which featured iann dior and UPSAHL, back in February.
The track was released alongside an NFT auction with the same name, giving his fans the opportunity to bid for a chance to win an original print of the single artwork signed by Shinoda and contemporary artist Cain Caser.
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