Sound In The Signals has an excellent interview of P Smoov, the producer of the hour, the producer for Mad Rad and Fresh Espresso.

These are my fav questions and answers:

You are in Mad Rad & Fresh Espresso (I’ll cover Mad Rad first). You guys released your first album last year White Gold and it has really lit up the scene in Seattle. Can you tell me a little about how all you guys got together and what the group is setting out to accomplish?

I met Terry Radjaw at one of his shows roughly 3 years ago. He was performing a solo act at that time and Buffalo Madonna was his backup dancer. Buffalo was rockin’ booty shorts and hightop rebooks at a backpacker show. Radjaw was rappin about throat babies and pussy when everyone else was preaching about some bullshit they didn’t really believe in. I hated “conscience rap”...

I’ve read some interesting things in interviews about why the album is titled Glamour, but can you let our readers know how you came up with the title and why?

One of the re-occurring themes on the record is grime vs. glamour. When we were composing this album Rik and I were both well below the poverty line. I was homeless and Rik was unemployed. We definitely fit the “Starving Artist” mold. It was fun making music about how our grimey, poverteous lives were somehow glamorous.

Lastly, being from a place that is starting to get some major buzz nation wide what are some of your favorite artists from the area that are either breaking out now or you think will break out?

They Live, Champagne Champagne, and VS… and us.

It's not as easy to do as you might think at this point in history—to write a piece about shopworn, cliche-encrusted Madonna, and make it not suck. Nice job, British man.

Over here, local rapper Grynch....

Grynch: Man, I'm from (middle-class Seattle neighborhood) Ballard. There is nothing bling or gangsta about someone from Ballard, and I just can't front like that. It doesn't make sense to me to lie about who I am or what I love. I rap about my car and the fact that Ballard is gentrifying and Denny's is now a condo building because that's what I know. Don't get me wrong, I listen to Jay-Z and I love hearing him talk big, but at least he really lives it. A lot of guys, it's all borrowed for the photo shoot.

LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy gives world-class interviews. Check out a new one he did with Resident Advisor’s Nick Sylvester here. In it, among other things, Murphy expresses dismay for his records and discusses the philosophy behind his own DJing and what sort of sets by other selectors turn him on. It’s all perceptive and interesting.

My favorite DJ sets are often filled with music I don't know and then suddenly one song I know and love, that's been earned. That's as good as it gets. When you're out dancing, and somebody's been playing music you just don't know at all, and then all the sudden something comes in that you know and love, right at a good moment, that's a little more open or energetic than the previous nine things...I prefer that.

Even though this week’s Data Breaker is larger than normal, it still doesn’t contain all of the material I was hoping to include about Jabon (aka audio engineer/Gravelvoice Studios proprietor Scott Colburn), who has a long, eventful history and an entertaining way of discussing it and his activities. So I’m going to post the whole thing here, for those Colburn fanatics out there (there should be more of you, but anyway…). The man is about much, much more than his credits on Animal Collective’s Feels and Strawberry Jam and the Arcade Fire’s Neon Bible.

Judging from your website, you’ve been making Jabon tracks since 1985. Either I haven’t been paying close enough attention or you’ve been keeping a very low profile. Obviously, it’s impossible for me to hear everything you’ve done before I shoot you these questions, so could you summarize your Jabon output and how it’s developed/mutated over the years? What was the initial inspiration for the project?

Yeah, the project started in 1985 when I took a music appreciation course at Indiana University. The professor played Stockhausen, Charles Ives and [Morton Subotnick's] Silver Apples of the Moon in class. It really opened my mind to music forms beyond the standard.

A few years earlier I happened upon the Residents - Mark of the Mole, which probably was the seed that started it all. I was into Punk at the time and Black Flag was my favorite band. So these things came together to push me into experimental music. The tape trading culture of the mid 80's was just starting to take off and I met Hal and Debbie at Cause and Effect (a huge cassette label out of Indianapolis). It was there that I heard Controlled Bleeding, Negativland, Lemon Kittens, Current 93, Whitehouse, Viscera, the list goes on for miles. I figured I could do that kind of music, too. Fortunately, I had access to a studio in which to do tape loop experiments, so the first couple Jabon tapes are tape loop based pieces with bad poetry.

Very quickly after that the convergence of instrumental Black Flag (and Ginn's instrumental trio Gone) and the SF band Chrome started to take hold. So from there on out, my tapes were made of "rock" trio improvisation, weird Residents-esque pop songs, intercut comedy and general madness. Anything Goes! The releases were just a document of what I was doing and was never just one type of thing.

After 10 years of that, several city moves, college and other bands, I settled in Seattle with the Sun City Girls. That band alone gave me all kinds of weird feedings. I did a few tapes while I was recording them, but it became harder to find the time. I then joined an experimental outfit that fit me quite well (Climax Golden Twins). So I stopped doing Jabon as a project and just did little one-off pieces here and there as the opportunity arose. This was the period of 1995-2005.

In 2005 I formed Wizard Prison with Ben McAllister and John Vallier. Again, my musical output was with the core group and didn't leave much time for solo music. Also at that time, as a recording engineer, things were really heating up while I worked on projects like Animal Collective and Arcade Fire.

But this year, I just decided to do it again. The inspiration came partly from the multimedia shows that Wizard Prison were doing and a little program called Absynth. I discovered this soft synth and was immediately drawn to the sounds it made. I thought it would be fun to reinvent Jabon and do a project I call "Music Monday" in which I improvise on the instrument and post a completed piece every week for a year. This started in April of 2009. There are currently 16 pieces up.

No matter how many records you sell, or festivals you play, or late-night network TV shows you appear on, your band isn’t actually famous until you’ve been interviewed by Nardwuar the Human Serviette. The man is like a private investigator (his interview with Iggy Pop is priceless), and in this interview with Fleet Foxes he definitely digs deep into their past. He talks about Robin’s dad’s old band the Fathoms and the fact that he once edited an Ugly Kid Joe video; he draws a strange correlation between the Murder City Devils, the Cave Singers, and “Dann Gallucci’s estranged cousin” who was in the Kingsmen; he name drops Shoreline, the Funhouse, the Duchess and the Duke and the Fee Fie Foe Fums. At this point in the interview Josh Tillman realizes, “Oh, you know a lot about music. I’m starting to catch on.”

But then Narwuar busts out a line that Robin wrote in regards to getting a good review from Pitchfork:

This is the ultimate Alice in Wonderland weirdo mindfuck through the rabbit hole brain blower.

“That is an amazing quote,” says Nardwuar. “That’s what you said in one of your blogs for the Seattle Weekly.” Wrong! You are wrong Nardwuar. The line was written for a Seattle weekly, but it wasn’t written for that Seattle Weekly. This is an egregious error, and it makes all previous “facts” you spouted suspect. We can’t trust anything else we heard in the interview. I mean, if you got that wrong, how can we be sure there’s really a place called “Shoreline,” or that Robin even has a dad?

Excellent Seattle techno producer the Sight Below gets grilled by Fact Magazine.

“I've been profoundly influenced by the Pacific Northwest - I think the landscape, weather and overall aesthetic of the region have been the most influential on my work to date,” the Sight Below says in the interview—and much more besides.

“Further Away”

Says Walla, during a recent interview with AP Magazine:

Ben [Gibbard, vocals/guitar] recently mentioned that he was interested in writing a softer album. Do you have the same intention?
No. [Laughs.] I have no interest in doing anything that's mild and meek. I want to make a radio record this next time out. There's no reason for us to keep doing what we're doing if we're making meeker, smaller records. That stuff doesn't translate well to the kinds of shows we're playing and to the numbers of people we're playing for. I don't particularly have any real connection to a lot of the mellower stuff that Ben writes. I really feel like he's getting his best stuff when he's being assertive and forward.

So does that mean bigger and bolder songs?
Yeah, I suppose so. In a way, when we signed to Atlantic, Plans was a sort of partial, half-hearted step into an attempt to make something that is more appealing on a broader scale. And I think that Narrow Stairs was really sort of a reactionary move—like very much the opposite of that. Maybe it's just a phase, but I'm really interested in making something that is appealing on a really broad level and something we can be really satisfied with. But I think that there's a way to bridge those two gaps. The prevailing wind is that art and commerce are not good bedfellows and that they can't meet halfway. I sort of refuse to believe that, and I would really like to do something that isn't a brainless pop record, but something people can definitely get into.

It's a few days old, but it's still worth reading.

"We got sick of waiting for Sade to make a new album," he said, introducing Valente's new album, "Elixir." The tracks are chill, with Valente's buttery voice melding with beats by Morris Hayes and Prince's guitar lines. Some are explicitly sexual. "This music is nasty, but it's not dirty," Prince said, explaining how sensual music fits in with his much-discussed faith — he's a Jehovah's Witness. "There's no profanity. It isn't promoting promiscuity. She's singing about her lover, who could be her partner for life."

Well, good for him. At least Jehovah hasn't turned Prince—formerly Public Enemy #1 for the Parents Music Resource Center—into a full-on prude.

To read about Prince and Prop 8, see here.

The Rumpus has a great interview with the great Princess Superstar. It's nice to see her treated like a writer. Her last album was a goddamned sci-fi musical epic, fercrissakes:

TR: I love the way you’ve rapped about yourself as a writer—the “cunning linguist.” What is writing like for you?

PS: It depends. Most of the time it’s not easy. I am not one of those writers that it just flows out of effortlessly. I have to sit and write and rewrite and sometimes it’s really challenging to get anything good out of myself. But then once I get going I have a good time and even make myself laugh sometimes.

TR: What’s the process like? Do you write on napkins in cafes or do you hunker down at home?

PS: I hunker down at home and stare at the computer for hours and maybe get a few lines out. OK, it’s not that bad. But it feels like that sometimes. I just broke up with a boyfriend so I have a little writer’s block at the moment.

Her new album, New Evolution, comes out early next year and debuts a new persona. I can't wait.

This morning, I met Gatsby of Cancer Rising (a.k.a. Larry Mizell Jr of My Philosophy) in the women's fragrance department at the downtown Bon Marche. Smells and body sprays moistened the Monday air and we spoke:

Why are we in the fragrance department? Why here?
Gatsby: Why not?

What were you for Halloween?
I was Fatty McBlipster: purple hoodie, tight jeans, Jordans, fanny pack, Raybans, rag around my neck and a U-lock, in my back pocket. Deliciously ironic, no? Probably not. I think most of the people that saw me thought it was just another day at the office. At one point I found myself standing outside of the Diplo show, and I think I was in danger of opening a hole in the fabric of space/time.

What was the best costume you saw?
Absolutely the girl dressed as Janelle Monae. I think it made her night when a car full of people raucously recognized her, and it certainly made ours.

How was Cancer Rising’s recent show at the J&M in Pioneer Square?
It fucking sucked. The top two reviews on the J&M's Citysearch page are tales of young ladies getting roofied.

When and where is your next show?
Let's see. November 19th at Nectar. We're (along with Grynch and Fatal Lucciauno) opening for Detroit's Royce Da 5'9", one of our favorite MC's of all time. We're pretty stoked for this. Royce is a beast. He used to be Eminem's protege long ago but for the last few years he could easily get in Em's ass IMHO.

What’s the latest in the world of Cancer Rising?
We’re sorting out beats, drinking beers, and taking it a day at a time. I made a funny lil clip-video for “Evryday Bidness” and now people on teh internets want me to make them for them as well. We also have another video, like a real one, about to debut for “Let's Start Some Shit”. We like to wait a year or two after releasing a record before the video's come out. Clever I know.

You have side projects, and side projects for your side projects.
Yes I do, I look for hustles everyday. Nite Owls with Barfly & Mr. Hill, and They Live! Nite Owls is going good, we've played some sweet-ass shows recently, and we're slowly but surely recording new songs. They live! is me and Bruce Illest a.k.a. Djblesone. We have an EP (The Dro Bots Saga) up for free download and so forth. You're definitely gonna hear more from us.

What is going through your mind right now?
My mind is a swirling miasma of scintillating thoughts and turgid ideas. And the smell of Anais Anais makes me think of Grace Jones riding a rhino through the Masai Mara. The rhino has armor on it. Jones is nude and greased.

* (Word spellcheck doesn't recognize the word roofied.)