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| laweekly.com/July 23-29 2010/LA Weekly (63)
was here that he and his older brother, Academy
Awardnominated director Spike Jonze, oncecultivated their
creativity. Spiegel went on tobecome the successful DJ Squeak E.
Clean, andbegan scoring commercials and films, and pro-duced
records for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Fatlipand many others.
But while he was putting sound to images, hewas working on his
own project. N.A.S.A. (North
America/South America)isnt just an album, itsan art piece.
Spiegel collaborated with BrazilianDJ Zegon (Ze Gonales) to
ambitiously combinedisparate voices from rock and hip-hop to makea
singular sound, pairing David Byrne with Ju-
rassic 5s Chali 2na, Spank Rock with M.I.A., andKaren O with the
Ol Dirty Bastard himself.
Hip-hop serves as connective tissue, the bounc-ing rhythms and
danceable beats tie this worktogether. It took Spiegel almost five
years to getthe record together.
Id meet [the artists] on tour across theworld, he says. I almost
never did it over theInternet. It could have been a random
collectionof songs, but it was important to me that therewas a
concept tying it together.
To do the track Gifted, for example, Spiegelcrossed a couple of
oceans and a few continents
to record a joint featuring Lykke Li, Santigold,and his friend
Kanye West, for whom he music-directed a tour.
Gifted came together, like, two weeks beforethe album was due,
Spiegel says. I thought ofKanye for it, then I get this call, like,
Yo, Im inHawaii; come out here and lets do this song.So I flew to
Hawaii that day. Then I contactedLykke, who immediately got back to
us and we
Just around the corner from an
indoor paintball range, a spy shop
and more than one parked van
which arent really vans but
homes the Squeak E. Clean Stu-
dios hide in the backyard of an anonymous Hol-
lywood home. Inside, the midcentury house is
filled with instruments, vintage mixing boards,
rack upon rack of guitars and basses, while
bleary-eyed techs lounging on oce chairs chat
about mixing stems, and other unintelligible
jargon.
Squeak E. Clean Studios looks like a musicshop meetsAnimal
House.
For Squeak E. Clean himself, DJ and producerSam Spiegel, founder
of the star-studded outfitN.A.S.A., this is home. Or it was, for a
time.
I lived here, then slowly I grew my company,Spiegel says,
slouched back in an oce chair ina room stacked with Moogs. Then,
like eightor nine people [were] coming in here every dayso Id come
down in my boxer shorts and therewould be somebody right there. It
got a little bit
much. Especially if I had a lady friend over.Although this dude
den is no longer his crash
pad, the Studios surrounded by tangled wires,jerry-rigged
soundproofing and even a Nin-tendo Power Glove (not for musical
purposes) is where Spiegels heart is.
It was here that the DJ/producer made hisname in L.A., after
leaving behind New York andhis childhood home in Bethesda,
Maryland. It
THE CONTINUING ADVENTURESOF SQUEAK E. CLEANTHE STARSTUDDED
N.A.S.A. PROJECT BY L.A.S BESTCONNECTED PRODUCER GETS A REMIX
BY DREW TEWKSBURY
flew a couple days later to Sweden to work withher. Then I had
been talking to Santi, so a couple
days later I flew to New York, and recorded her,then I had to
fly back to mix the record, thenpretty much turn it in the next
day.
Spiegel has more stories than the library, andhe nonchalantly
describes his connections tosome of the more creative names in the
industry.He talks about the time when E-40 and MethodMan stopped by
the Squeak E. Clean studios torecord their track: They were all
drinking jugsof Carlo Rossi that theyd pour into bottles ofgrape
Gatorade.
On the raucous collaboration between KoolKeith and Toms Waits:
He lived up in the cabinway out in Napa, in wine country. He
hadnt
really done any collaborations before, [or] any-thing with
electronic sounds, but his son wasreally into Kool Keith, so he did
it.
On Kool Keith: Kool Keith is writing musicalmost all day. Every
day he wakes up, writessome music, eats some Chinese food,
thenshops for cloth because he designs womenslingerie and panties,
you know then goesback to writing.
Spiegel even captured one of the last tracksever recorded by Ol
Dirty Bastard, allegedly
just weeks before he passed away. I didnt get tomeet him, but we
kept trying to have him come
into the studio, and he kept standing us up. Sohe eventually
said that he would record thetrack in his own studio.
Nearly a year has passed since Spiegeldropped N.A.S.A., and he
has revisited the piecethrough the eyes of others. For his
upcomingrelease, The Big Bang, Spiegel commissionedSteve Aoki, L.A.
Riots, spazztastic FrenchmanMr. Oizo, and many others to reenvision
hisdance art piece.
So how do you exactly one-up a talent-packedalbum five years in
the making and a follow-upremix album by top-name DJs?
I just spent a month in Africa. I went to Ethio-
pia and stayed in a grass hut and recorded thesevillagers. I got
a horn section in Addis [Ababa],and some sound from these villagers
in thesouth. Its still amorphous, but that will probablybe a big
part of the record.
N.A.S.A. IS AN ART
PIECE. SQUEAK E.
CLEAN COMBINED
DISPARATE VOICES
FROM ROCK AND HIP
HOP TO MAKEA SINGULAR SOUND,
PAIRING DAVID
BYRNE WITH JURAS
SIC S CHALI NA,
SPANK ROCK WITH
M.I.A., AND KAREN O
WITH THE OL DIRTY
BASTARD HIMSELF.
