N.A.S.A. – Interview pt. 1
I met up with Superproducer/DJ duo N.A.S.A. in DC not too long ago, and had a nice conversation with them. Definitely real cool, down to earth people who just happen to work with some of the hottest musicians in the world. It was definitely a good time, check out part one, where we talk about their live show, the Illuminati, kidnapping different artists, and trying to work with James Brown.
Judge Mental: So, what’s up guys?
Squeak-E-Clean: Not much, not much. I’m good. What’s up Austin?
Zegon: We’re good. That was the last show from this phase of the tour. We’re gonna have like 4 days before SXSW starts. We’ve had like, 6 shows this week.
Judge Mental: Out of all the cities you guys have played so far, where has there been the best reception?
Zegon: This came to the top of the list.
Squeak-E-Clean:Yeah, DC. New York. Montreal. Minneapolis. Seattle.
Zegon: Those are the tops. But Most Def DC.
Squeak-E-Clean:LA.
Zegon: We didn’t play in LA this time.
Judge Mental: Well one of the questions everybody’s been asking is how you guys are gonna come through with the live so, especially since the record is so guest heavy. And you guys obviously came through with a really creative show. So what’s the idea behind the live experience, and how did you guys piece it together?
Zegon: I think first of all we’ve always been party rocking DJs. That’s who we’ve always been, and who we’re always going to be. So we just played ideas from the record, our remixes, our edits, our mashups, our friends remixes, songs from our favourite remixers. And we cut up video. The video tonight wasn’t very huge, you couldn’t see it very well. But we have video attached to every song in like a quicktime. And we brought our crew, you know. Our intergalactic circus came to rock the crowd. And Ras Congo is with us on this tour. He’s our guru. He’s like our mentor. And everywhere we go if we get a chance we try to bring out a guest. But basically it’s me and Sam rocking the crowd.
Squeak-E-Clean:Could you tell that we were controlling the videos with the turntables?
Judge Mental: Yeah definitely, like when you would stutter tracks, and the videos would do the same.
Zegon: yeah, there were a lot of moments when we were live remixing, so there’s like two songs, sometimes three. And I keep going between my video, his video. He was mixing the songs, and I was mixing the videos. We don’t do this much, it’s new. I’ve seen other people mixing like DV-Js, mixing like 4 videos. It’s crazy, but so nice.
Judge Mental: Well it was a really nice experience seeing the audio and the visual. And that’s something that’s also been the record as well. You guys have had different artists doing the videos for each song. How did you get in touch with some of the more high profile artists? What’s the story there?
Squeak-E-Clean:Well, Zegon has some serious connections in some secret societies. I can’t really go into it too much right now, but he’s got some really high up connections. In the masons, and the knights of templar, and other illuminati societies. So they helped us. So using Zegons connections, we got the CIA and the FBI to help us. And what we do is we get a SWAT team, find out where they are using the CPU chip that everyone has implanted in their brains that people don’t know about. I probably shouldn’t talk about that either. But we find them
Zegon: We kidnap them.
S:yeah, wherever they are on the planet earth. Usually use cyanide to scoop them up. Then we bring them to like a dungeon in Guantanamo Bay, and waterboard them until they agree to our views. And agree to work on our record. Then we usually drop them off butt naked in some random city after we’re done with them. And after they’ve signed their contract of course.
Judge Mental: So all of this is going to be in the documentary?
Squeak-E-Clean:Everything except for the secret societies. we weren’t really allowed to film much.
Zegon: We weren’t allowed to reveal it. But no, most of the visual artists were friends before. Like we used Shepard Fairey. He’s a legend, an icon. But he’s also a close friend. So he did the video for Money, but not for money. For love. And most of our artists are our close friends.
Squeak-E-Clean:Yeah, like Mark Gonzales.
Zegon: Sage.
Zegon: People were just joining and believing in the product.
Judge Mental: Is the same pretty much true of the musicians that you enlisted?
Zegon: Some of the hardest ones, like the most impossible to believe; Tom Waits, David Byrne, the made it for the love too. They just liked it, and they believed in the project. But that’s the reason it took so many years, because we made it completely by ourselves.
Judge Mental: Was there anybody that you tried to work with on the album that you didn’t get a chance to? Or did you pretty much cover all the bases?
Zegon: Many, many, many, many. Everybody you can imagine who’s dope was on our list. Our biggest frustration was James Brown. We were in touch, but he was always touring and performing up until he died. But we tried some other crazy legends like Lou Reed, David Bowie. We had this dream list, and we tried everybody. We weren’t afraid to reach out to anybody.
Squeak-E-Clean:Bjork. Morissey.
Zegon:You know Bjork, you played with her before right?
Squeak-E-Clean:Yeah.
Zegon: She just couldn’t at the time. But maybe next time.
Squeak-E-Clean:Thom Yorke, Damon Albarn. The list is endless how many people we tried.
That concludes part one. Check back for more soon!
peace,
-the judge
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