TODD SOLONDZ: HAPPINESS RECAST | WHEN BROOKS MET REINER ... | THE CONTINUING ADVENTURES OF SQUEAK E.

CLEAN

JULY 23-29, 2010 / VOL. 32 / NO. 35 laweekly.com


C8
dlj`Z
THE CONTINUING ADVENTURES
OF SQUEAK E. CLEAN
THE STAR-STUDDED N.A.S.A. PROJECT BY L.A.’S BEST-CONNECTED PRODUCER GETS A REMIX
J
BY DREW TEWKSBURY
ust around the corner from an
indoor paintball range, a spy shop
and more than one parked van
— which aren’t 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 office chairs chat
about “mixing stems,” and other unintelligible
jargon.
Squeak E. Clean Studios looks like a music
shop meets Animal House.
For Squeak E. Clean himself, DJ and producer
Sam Spiegel, founder of the star-studded outfit
N.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 office chair in
a room stacked with Moogs. “Then, like eight
or nine people [were] coming in here every day
so I’d come down in my boxer shorts and there
would 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 Spiegel’s heart is.
It was here that the DJ/producer made his
name in L.A., after leaving behind New York and
his childhood home in Bethesda, Maryland. It
E%8%J%8%
i\cfX[\[1
Jhl\Xb
<%
:c\Xe
]ifek


Xe[
ZfccXYfiXkfi
;A
Q\^fe
was here that he and his older brother, Academy
Award–nominated director Spike Jonze, once
cultivated their creativity. Spiegel went on to
become the successful DJ Squeak E. Clean, and
began scoring commercials and films, and pro-
duced records for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Fatlip
and many others.
But while he was putting sound to images, he
was working on his own project. N.A.S.A. (North
America/South America) isn’t just an album, it’s
an art piece. Spiegel collaborated with Brazilian
DJ Zegon (Ze Gonales) to ambitiously combine
disparate voices from rock and hip-hop to make
a singular sound, pairing David Byrne with Ju-
rassic 5’s Chali 2na, Spank Rock with M.I.A., and
Karen O with the Ol’ Dirty Bastard himself.
Hip-hop serves as connective tissue, the bounc-
ing rhythms and danceable beats tie this work
together. It took Spiegel almost five years to get
the record together.
“I’d meet [the artists] on tour across the
world,” he says. “I almost never did it over the
Internet. It could have been a random collection
of songs, but it was important to me that there
was a concept tying it together.”
To do the track “Gifted,” for example, Spiegel
crossed 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 before
the album was due,” Spiegel says. “I thought of
Kanye for it, then I get this call, like, ‘Yo, I’m in
Hawaii; come out here and let’s do this song.’
So I flew to Hawaii that day. Then I contacted
Lykke, who immediately got back to us and we
G?FKF
9P
9<EQF
flew a couple days later to Sweden to work with
her. 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, then
pretty much turn it in the next day.”
Spiegel has more stories than the library, and
he nonchalantly describes his connections to
some of the more creative names in the industry.
He talks about the time when E-40 and Method
Man stopped by the Squeak E. Clean studios to
record their track: “They were all drinking jugs
of Carlo Rossi that they’d pour into bottles of
grape Gatorade.”
On the raucous collaboration between Kool
Keith and Toms Waits: “He lived up in the cabin
way out in Napa, in wine country. He hadn’t
really done any collaborations before, [or] any-
thing with electronic sounds, but his son was
really into Kool Keith, so he did it.”
On Kool Keith: “Kool Keith is writing music
almost all day. Every day he wakes up, writes
some music, eats some Chinese food, then
shops for cloth — because he designs women’s
N.A.S.A. IS AN ART lingerie and panties, you know — then goes
PIECE. SQUEAK E. back to writing.”
CLEAN COMBINED Spiegel even captured one of the last tracks
ever recorded by Ol’ Dirty Bastard, allegedly
DISPARATE VOICES just weeks before he passed away. “I didn’t get to
FROM ROCK AND HIP� meet him, but we kept trying to have him come
into the studio, and he kept standing us up. So
HOP TO MAKE he eventually said that he would record the
A SINGULAR SOUND, track in his own studio.”
Nearly a year has passed since Spiegel
PAIRING DAVID dropped N.A.S.A., and he has revisited the piece
BYRNE WITH JURAS� through the eyes of others. For his upcoming
release, The Big Bang, Spiegel commissioned
SIC �’S CHALI �NA, Steve Aoki, L.A. Riots, spazztastic Frenchman
SPANK ROCK WITH Mr. Oizo, and many others to reenvision his
dance art piece.
M.I.A., AND KAREN O So how do you exactly one-up a talent-packed
WITH THE OL’ DIRTY album five years in the making and a follow-up
BASTARD HIMSELF. remix 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 these
villagers. I got a horn section in Addis [Ababa],
and some sound from these villagers in the
south. It’s still amorphous, but that will probably
be a big part of the record.”
E%8%J%8%
n`cc
Y\
gcXp`e^
fe
X
Y`cc
n`k_
B`[
:l[`#
9Xjje\ZkXi#

8$KiXb#
Iljbf
Xe[
dXep
fk_\ij
Xk
k_\
8l[`fk`jk`Z
]\jk`mXc
fe

JXkli[Xp#
Alcp
)+
Xk
k_\
EFJ
<m\ek
:\ek\i
`e
JXe
9\ieXi[`ef%
| laweekly.com / July 23-29 2010 / LA Weekly ( 63 )