KING OF PAIN
Feb 1, 2007 12:00 PM, By Scott T. Sterling
“Brooklyn, fear, drug addiction, transition, hope, sex and flying.” This fragmented sentence (found on an artist blog created to document the final stages of recording) is an apt description of underground hip-hop icon El-P's solo sophomore album, I'll Sleep When You're Dead. Over four years in the making, the follow-up to his lauded debut, Fantastic Damage, reveals El's immense growth as both an artist and primarily as a producer. In between the two, he's established his Definitive Jux imprint as one of the premier indie-rap labels in the world and collaborated with everyone from TV on the Radio to avant-garde pianist Matthew Shipp.
“I've been trying to make this album for almost five years and have had a couple of false starts along the way,” El-P (aka El-Producto) states from his home studio in New York the morning after some serious drinking with friends. “I would jump into it, only to get pulled away to handle other productions and label business. The album went through a bunch of title phases, and I'll Sleep When You're Dead [Definitive Jux, 2007] won as the most fucked-up album title I could think of. I figured it was probably the most threatening album title, that's for sure. There's definitely a theme to it that permeates the whole record. I wanted something I could dig myself into and come back to throughout recording. The simplest way to explain it is to say that the album title is what I imagine the city to be whispering in my ear. This really is my New York record, my post-traumatic stress record. It's been a weird time, and I really wanted to take a snapshot and chronicle some of the vibe that I've been encountering in the city since our world started to tumble down the rabbit hole, without being too heavy-handed or obviously political. I think that people are losing their fucking minds, and I'm one of them. I've gone through some dark times between the two albums, so the title fits.”
Indeed, as the album is an apocalyptic mix of meticulously crafted beats that find El-P's signature maelstrom of sound honed to a fine but brutally effective edge. Going beyond his usual comfort zone of collaborators, the new album brings contributions from the likes of such heavyweights as Trent Reznor, Mars Volta and Cat Power, among others. He's surprisingly talkative for this early hour, obviously excited and more than a little relieved to have such an ambitious undertaking ready to unleash on an unsuspecting public.
What inspired you to blog about the recording process of I'll Sleep When You're Dead?
It was just kind of spontaneous. I was fucking around and thought it might be something cool to do. I had the idea and in one minute created the blog. I hadn't seen that before. The whole blog community seems to circle around the critical, and it occurred to me to try something different. I see how people react to being let in a little bit more with MySpace and everything. No one had done a music blog that had a purpose and would evolve as a project was evolving, as opposed to the usual snarky criticisms of some writer.
There's a quote on the blog where you said the sound on this album is “less dense.” Now that it's done, do you still feel that way?
When I said it was “less dense,” I was full of shit. This record is definitely dense. Maybe a better way to say it is that it's less polluted. Where my production is now and where it was when I did Fantastic Damage [Definitive Jux, 2002] are two very different places. I tried to learn how to refine shit a little bit and to put everything in its right place. I think there are moments on this album that are denser than anything I've ever done, but in a more orchestrated way that melds together as opposed to crashing together. Although, there are a few moments that are complete train wrecks of sound, but what can I say? I like that shit. I'm noisy.
Something that definitely jumped out was the way many of the songs evolve from one idea into something else entirely different by the end, like “Tasmanian Pain Coaster.”
That song actually took me about two and a half years to create, probably because I'm insane and don't know when to stop. With songs, I always just keep going and picking away at them. What I wanted to do musically was to fuck with structure. Instead of each song being one vibe and having a bunch of different songs collectively creating an album, I wanted there to be movement and changes and drama. I kind of went there, for better or worse.
This album finds you collaborating with acts like Mars Volta and Trent Reznor. How did that affect your writing and recording process?
It varied. To some degree, the way that I did it was supercollaborative. For the Mars Volta guys, they actually came in and sang and played guitar over a song I'd written. But I ended up cutting it up on the PC to fit their part into “Tasmanian Pain Coaster.” Working with Trent Reznor on the song “Flyentology,” I knew exactly what I wanted him to do on the song. I sent it out to him, and he was really cool about it and made it happen. Trent is one of the people that I really wanted to make something happen with. I'm a real fan. His stuff is so heavy, which is attractive to cats like me. His productions are so hard and brutal but still melodic. That song seemed like the perfect fit for him.
How do you decide which artists will match up with a particular song?
The way that I use collaborations is much more about the moment or what the song needs. I don't want to do the extraneous collaboration, where it's just about having the opportunity to work with a certain artist. I tried to do it in more of a classy way. Getting their contributions made me look at the songs differently, even though most of them were created already. I would love to do a whole album with certain singers. I've never really worked with people outside of my circle of friends like Aesop Rock and Mr. Lif.
There's a funny quote on your blog about people overestimating the capabilities of Pro Tools….
There is this faction of the music pseudo-intelligentsia that has come up with the idea that there is a pure way to make music, and using Pro Tools is not a part of it. When I made Fantastic Damage, I listed the equipment that was used in the liner notes. One of the pieces was Pro Tools. Then I noticed in certain reviews these writers saying, “Clearly he's using the Pro Tools magic to make it happen.” I'm like, “What the fuck?” There's literally no one out here not using Pro Tools, except for the very few who can afford not to use it. There seems to be a weird fear for some people in terms of using technology in music. But mostly, those are people who know nothing about making music or what Pro Tools is really used for. I feel like anyone who's really into recording gets it.
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