Cut Chemist Gets Complicated on 'Sound of the Police'

Posted on Jun 24th 2010 2:00PM by Linda Laban
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For a man who's used to rocking eight turntables, you'd think cutting back to one might simplify things for Cut Chemist. Following his collaboration with DJ Shadow, where the DJ/producers played with four turntables apiece, the L.A. artist uses just one on his new live mix album, 'Sound of the Police.' But Cut Chemist, aka Lucas McFadden, reveals that less really did turn out to mean more.

"This is the most complicated thing I've ever done," he tells Spinner. "That's saying a lot because I always try and challenge myself with complicated things. My last release I did with DJ Shadow was an eight-turntable and loop-pedal live mix CD. That was complicated, but for some reason, when I whittle things down to one turntable and a loop pedal and just myself, things got more complicated. Ironically, I try to simplify and it actually exponentially got more complicated. I don't know what it is with me. I guess I like a challenge."

Cut Chemist, whose former bands include the now-defunct Jurassic 5 and Ozomatli, now realizes that translating what two men with more equipment do gets way trickier when it becomes a one-man show. "I think it's the fact that I have less tools to manipulate more things. I don't have eight turntables at my disposal to change records and I don't have a partner helping me."

Still, that won't stop McFadden taking 'Sound of the Police' on the road because, he says, the main reason for recording the record was to follow it with a live spectacle. "This CD was born out of a live performance I did solo that I never intended to put out, but it went over so well," he says. "I was opening up for an Ethiopian jazz musician, Mulatu Astatke. I had cameras on my turntable and pedal so people knew exactly what I was doing. It helped them to understand. I thought more people need to see this, so I made the CD."