Sunday, February 08, 2009

Reeeeeeecaaaaaaap!!

I did my first "real" interview for Motor FM on Saturday!!! When I say "real" I mean in the swinging the microphone over and back between me and a dj/producer, sitting on a couch in an empty venue hours before the record release party of his 6 years in the making project, which happens to be an album with EVERYONE on it, from Karen O to Tom Waits, Ghostface Killah, Lykke Li, Kanye West and everybody else ever. I was n-n-n-ervous but Ez from N.A.S.A was a pro even though the first party of the tour had been the night before in London and he'd only had a couple of hours sleep. We started late so we didn't have as much time as planned for, but we chatted for 15 minutes "on the record" about the mighty "Spirit of Apollo"; of course when I switched off the recorder we kept talking and it was even better talking than when the mic had been switched on.

Ez aka DJ Zegon and Sam {Squeak E Clean - bro of Spike Jonze omg} are some of the last people to have worked with ODB before he passed away, the track "Strange Enough" was one ODB worked on especially with them - it's not some found material that they fandangled into something "new". And Karen O's snarling drawl on the chorus is the most perfect match.

"Spirit of Apollo" is seriously the stunt of the year. In the beginning Ez and Sam sat down and wrote their wishlist of dream artists to work with for this project, Ez said they got 80% of those people. James Brown was on that list, unfortunately he passed away before they could get started.

Ez just took a month break (6 years work in progress remember) to hang out on the beach in Sao Paulo before starting the tour this week, when he only got his hands on the finished record itself. He could have had it sooner if Sam mailed it to him from LA, but Ez told him he wanted to wait til they reunited in London for the start of the tour so that Sam could pass it directly into Ez's hands. (This was my favourite part of the interview, when Ze said that).

Some of the best tracks are "Whatchadoin" - feat M.I.A, Spank Rock, Santogold & Nick Zinner and "Hip Hop" - feat KRS-One, Fat Lip and Slim Kid Tre, has one of best raps ever making fun of so-called hip hop culture.

This project is HUGE. They're still adding footage from the release tour for the documentary coming soon. Plus, amazing artists have created the videos for each track, plus there will be a remix album. PLUS there's a hidden track!



I'm not sure when/if the interview will air > the guys at Motor fm still have to listen to it and edit if they can salvage anything!