Since the release of his 2020 album græ, Moses Sumney has been building something. Today, the Asheville-based musician unveiled his creative label Tuntum—a recording outlet, production company, and creative agency. The label’s first release is Sumney’s inventive cover of T-Pain’s “Can’t Believe It” featuring saxophonist Sam Gendel. The cover also comes with a self-directed, Tuntum-produced video that takes place in the Appalachian Mountains.
“When I moved to California at 16, T-Pain’s ‘Can’t Believe It’ was one of the first songs I heard on the radio,” Sumney said of the song. “Sitting in a vast Wal-Mart parking lot, I wondered at how everything was bigger in America, and turned up the bass. I learned to associate T-Pain with newness, half because his music soundtracked a transitional point in my life, half because his sonic exploration was so fresh. Much like Suzanne Ciani, Herbie Hancock, and Laurie Anderson before him, T-Pain has remained an aesthetic beacon for me as I’ve explored the ever-thinning boundary between the human voice and technological augmentation of it. As I enter yet another life transition with my new label Tuntum, a tribute to T-Pain felt like the most fitting beginning of a new era.”
Watch the video below.
