Sound compound

>> Cut Chemist on digital digging and
his platter with DJ Shadow

THE RIGHT REACTION: Cut Chemist

by SCOTT C

On the road to push their latest collaboration, The Hard Sell, DJ Shadow and Cut Chemist have embarked on a mammoth tour, throwing local hero Kid Koala into the mix for good measure. Cut Chemist still holds down DJing duties for Jurassic 5, is gearing up to release another solo LP sometime in 2009, and recently made a cameo in the hit film Juno as (you guessed it) a chemistry teacher. The Mirror reached Lucas MacFadden, aka Cut Chemist, by phone in Austin, Texas.

Mirror: This isn’t your first time working with DJ Shadow, so when you guys are working on a project together, is there a competitiveness going on, or is it more of a complementary collaboration?

Cut Chemist: I would definitely say it’s a complementary thing. There’s always some element of friendly competition when you’re working with anyone, but I’d say it’s more like two mountain climbers trying to get up the mountain, lifting each other up and building. It’s just the way we’ve always worked.

M: How do you guys handle changes and shifts in personal musical taste? I mean, after so long, you must confound each other sometimes with the choices you make musically.

CC: I think we’re both the kind of artists that would never do the same thing twice, which is why we respect each other as friends, so I think that if there was ever a move that he made that I expected, I would be disappointed. The fact that he always has me saying, “What the hell is that?” is something that I like.

M: What’s the difference between a good album and a good mixtape, in your opinion?

CC: I don’t know. You can collect you own publishing on an album, I guess? (laughs)

M: There just seem to be so many mixtapes falling out of people’s asses these days that the bar for a good album has dropped.

CC: Look at where DJing’s at today. Everybody’s DJing. Getting music is literally at anybody’s fingertips, whereas before, you had to do quite a lot of research. So if you were putting out a mixtape, there was quite a bit of digging involved, and now you can download an a cappella to this and an instrumental to that, and it’s a lot more disposable. So mixtapes end up being a lot less passionate than they once were.

M: As a longtime vinyl buyer, I have to confess that the age of the blog has changed the way I search out and find new music, but I try to keep a simple balance between the two. How about you?

CC: Yeah. I definitely do a lot more online digging than I have in the past. For one reason, that seems to be where all the records are going. For a long time, I used to go into stores and the guy would say something like, “Oh, I’m holding that for the Japanese.” But now people hold on to things so they can sell them on eBay. At least it’s up for grabs. Time is also a big factor because I’m always touring or working on something, so when I don’t have time to go digging in the stores, I just go online at one in the morning and it’s always open. I still like to do as much field digging in tour cities, to see what’s out there, and even though they are diminishing, they’re still out there.

With DJ Shadow and Kid Koala
at Metropolis on Tuesday,
Jan. 29, 8 p.m., $35, all ages