Disquiet

Another good Red Bull Academy Lecture, this one from ace turntablist and producer Cut Chemist, aka Lucas Macfadden, Jurassic 5 cohort and DJ Shadow collaborator. He talks about the difficulty (well, more the expense) in sampling rock stars, the downside of having a sample-laden track become a hit, potentially mythical court-ordered sound-file analysis, the influence of Ethiopian soul jazz, and Los Angeles during the early days of its hip-hop scene. It’s not every DJ who can, in one interview, say “I owe my lawyer so much” and talk about the inherent quality of “diminishing chord changes.” Somewhat ironically, for legal reasons the music Chemist played during the conversation isn’t included in the downloadable file, although it does have images from the talk embedded in it (M4A). More at cutchemist.com and at redbullmusicacademy.com, which has an earlier interview with him from 2002.

By Marc Weidenbaum