We’ve always done our spiritual prep for Yom Kippur with Erez Yechiel’s ‘Selichot’ album, which you could stream here. Listen to that album and then go to a Sephardic beit knesset and you’ll feel like you are hearing the band or at least a cover band play the greatest hits (or maybe we’re spoiled from going to Yitzchak Bitton’s Moroccan shtiebel). Well, in comes Automatic Toys with a different vibe and take on another Yom Kippur classic, ‘Kol Nidrie’, the Aramaic introduction to the holiday.
Shemspeed is an independent recording label and promotional agency highlighting cross-over music artists with positive and unifying messages. Founded by Erez Safar, an American-Israeli DJ/Producer, Shemspeed promotes over 15 dynamic artists representing a wide range of genres including hip-hop, reggae, and rock. These artists include Y-Love (revolutionary Jewish hip-hop), Diwon (Yemenite / Sephardic hip-hop, Israeli music and more), DeScribe (soul-awakening dancehall, hip-hop, & soul), and Electro Morocco (Israeli rock, dance music.) Shemspeed artists, collectively showcasing the diversity in world Jewish music, have performed with musicians as varied as Snoop Dogg, Lou Reed, Idan Raichel and Eminem; they’ve been profiled in Rolling Stone, SPIN, The New York Times and XXL; and they’ve been seen and heard around the world on various TV appearances (Conan O’Brien, CBS and BBC World) and global radio. Shemspeed’s mission is unifying people through culture and education, celebrating diversity and common ground. By way of this work, we add a public Jewish voice to multi-cultural, inter-faith, creative and collaborative bridge-building.