After 30 years of innovation in the L.A. music scene, Cut Chemist’s résumé of achievements is too long to list. Some highlights include producing and DJing for the famed rap group Jurassic 5, and his first solo album, “The Audience’s Listening” (2006), which cleared the top 10 on Billboard’s Dance/Electronic chart.
And yet, as a self-described isolationist, said résumé might not exist if he were left to his own devices.
“If it were up to me, I would just lock myself in a room and not go anywhere. But people are like, ‘Hey, you want to come to Brazil?’” Cut Chemist, real name Lucas McFadden, explains, referring to teaching at the Red Bull Music Academy in São Paulo back in 2002. On that trip, fellow legendary producer and turntablist Madlib forced him to explore the city (they were sharing a hotel room). “It’s like I’m being led around by other people to live life.”
McFadden has been led to many musical benchmarks in his artistic evolution. In 1977, when he was 4 years old, his parents brought him to see “Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope” at the Chinese Theatre. A few years later, in the mid-’90s, a friend beckoned him to make the journey from Hollywood to the South Bay to check out Good Life Cafe, where he saw his all-time greatest inspiration, L.A. alternative hip-hop pioneers Freestyle Fellowship.
When Madlib led him out of the hotel room in São Paulo, all the samba schools were training rigorously for the Carnival. A few years later McFadden returned to sample live samba for “The Garden,” the song from “The Audience’s Listening” that has nearly 11 million Spotify streams, the most in his solo discography.
“I tie a lot of my musical choices to real-life experiences that I otherwise wouldn’t do,” McFadden says. “As I come back home and isolate, I romanticize about the past, and the music is the best way for me to live that. I get to watch my own soundtrack through the music.”
Now, after being led to so many incredible opportunities, McFadden is sharing his soundtrack via “Expert of None,” a monthly four-part event series running from May to August at Only the Wild Ones in Venice, presented in partnership with online publication Dust & Grooves. At each installment, he discussed a specific topic as he sorts through different records from his collection of over 25,000.
A self-described isolationist, Lucas McFadden has relied on friends and mentors, from Madlib to Freestyle Fellowship, to drag him into the scenes that later define his most beloved tracks.
(Annie Noelker / For The Times)
The first event was titled “Imagining Music.” McFadden described his fascination with the relationship between music and imagery, starting with “Star Wars.” The second event, “Tuned In, Comped Out,” was about discovering music through compilations. Event 3, “To All My Teachers,” dove into how his mentors and peers brought their emotion into recommendations. The fourth event coming Sunday is called “Building the Garden,” culminating in how all of the previous subjects fed “The Audience’s Listening.”
Beginning with “Star Wars,” McFadden’s parents couldn’t take him to the theater every day like he wanted, he says, so they bought him the soundtrack. He would put on the record and watch the movie behind closed eyes. As he visualized Obi-Wan’s sacrifice and the Mos Eisley cantina, he drew associations between sounds and environments that have informed his creative choices ever since.
“The most impactful image [in ‘Star Wars’] was the desert planet — the separation of the sand and sky. It was so open and simple. It’s a moving painting with orchestral music and little to no dialogue for a long amount of time. Very avant-garde,” McFadden says. “No other ‘Star Wars’ installment did that. I want my music rooted in the ground with my head in the clouds.”
He associates sandy, earthy music with African and Latin genres, like the samba he recorded in São Paulo for “The Garden.” It’s grounded in a specific place, carrying with it all the tastes, smells and textures McFadden can relive from that trip.
By contrast, the sky and the air represent wonder and possibility, like what he felt when he first heard Laurie Anderson’s computerized psychedelic anthem, “O Superman,” in 1982. In searching for that similar feeling on the album, he turned to compilations. One of them was “Alternative Funk: Folie Distinguée” (1985), which included “Megamix” by the French industrial pioneers Vox Populi.
“That changed the trajectory of the whole album. [‘Megamix’] was very cyberpunk. Also rooted in old-school, so it spoke to my youth, but it’s through a psychedelic filter and musique concrète,” McFadden says. “When I heard this music, I said, ‘That’s the kind of music I want to make now.’ All that drum break-y rap stuff. I thought that’s what I wanted to do. Not anymore.”
Cut Chemist’s “Expert of None” is a four-part event series in Venice, where he riffs through 25,000 records to link “Star Wars” imagery, global rhythms and risky studio experiments.
(Annie Noelker / For The Times)
McFadden directly sampled the “Megamix” electro beat on “Storm,” from “The Audience’s Listening,” prefacing the drop with alien sonics before Edan and Mr. Lif deliver their rap verses. But McFadden’s turn away from core hip-hop can also be heard throughout the album in the riskier choices, like purposefully employing sloppy scratches on “(My 1st) Big Break.”
“The end is very drunk. It adds to the chaos, which is the point. I like those decisions. It’s not clean and technical,” McFadden says. “I took so many chances and decided to do something dangerous that was counterintuitive.”
One element that balances out the danger is the rapper Hymnal, real name Terry Robinson. He contributed a verse to “What’s the Altitude” (the second most-streamed song on McFadden’s Spotify at more than 8 million), and they have been friends since they were 11 years old.
“We’ve been through a whole lot of life together. To make this song together as friends, it’s playful,” McFadden says. But part of the safety and familiarity of their collaboration is exploring new kinds of music together. Robinson introduced him to a lot of the airy, psychedelic sounds he loves, like Frank Zappa, and the imagery that plays in McFadden’s mind when he listens back to the danceable breakbeat is them together at a rave in the early ‘90s.
“We would go to raves and be the hip-hop kids. What are we doing here? Let’s hang out and be our hip-hop selves in the midst of the lights, the loud music and all this recreational drug use,” McFadden says. “We’re two friends that have known each other going into this uncharted musical direction.”
McFadden doesn’t mention if Robinson is the one who led him to the raves. But regardless of how he ended up there, he is assured that 20 years later, everyone hearing “The Audience’s Listening” can feel the same way he felt there, and in Brazil, and in the Chinese Theatre watching “Star Wars.”
After 30 years of innovation in the L.A. music scene, Cut Chemist’s résumé of achievements is too long to list. Some highlights include producing and DJing for the famed rap group Jurassic 5, and his first solo album, “The Audience’s Listening” (2006), which cleared the top 10 on Billboard’s Dance/Electronic chart.
And yet, as a self-described isolationist, said résumé might not exist if he were left to his own devices.
“If it were up to me, I would just lock myself in a room and not go anywhere. But people are like, ‘Hey, you want to come to Brazil?’” Cut Chemist, real name Lucas McFadden, explains, referring to teaching at the Red Bull Music Academy in São Paulo back in 2002. On that trip, fellow legendary producer and turntablist Madlib forced him to explore the city (they were sharing a hotel room). “It’s like I’m being led around by other people to live life.”
McFadden has been led to many musical benchmarks in his artistic evolution. In 1977, when he was 4 years old, his parents brought him to see “Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope” at the Chinese Theatre. A few years later, in the mid-’90s, a friend beckoned him to make the journey from Hollywood to the South Bay to check out Good Life Cafe, where he saw his all-time greatest inspiration, L.A. alternative hip-hop pioneers Freestyle Fellowship.
When Madlib led him out of the hotel room in São Paulo, all the samba schools were training rigorously for the Carnival. A few years later McFadden returned to sample live samba for “The Garden,” the song from “The Audience’s Listening” that has nearly 11 million Spotify streams, the most in his solo discography.
“I tie a lot of my musical choices to real-life experiences that I otherwise wouldn’t do,” McFadden says. “As I come back home and isolate, I romanticize about the past, and the music is the best way for me to live that. I get to watch my own soundtrack through the music.”
Now, after being led to so many incredible opportunities, McFadden is sharing his soundtrack via “Expert of None,” a monthly four-part event series running from May to August at Only the Wild Ones in Venice, presented in partnership with online publication Dust & Grooves. At each installment, he discussed a specific topic as he sorts through different records from his collection of over 25,000.
A self-described isolationist, Lucas McFadden has relied on friends and mentors, from Madlib to Freestyle Fellowship, to drag him into the scenes that later define his most beloved tracks.
(Annie Noelker / For The Times)
The first event was titled “Imagining Music.” McFadden described his fascination with the relationship between music and imagery, starting with “Star Wars.” The second event, “Tuned In, Comped Out,” was about discovering music through compilations. Event 3, “To All My Teachers,” dove into how his mentors and peers brought their emotion into recommendations. The fourth event coming Sunday is called “Building the Garden,” culminating in how all of the previous subjects fed “The Audience’s Listening.”
Beginning with “Star Wars,” McFadden’s parents couldn’t take him to the theater every day like he wanted, he says, so they bought him the soundtrack. He would put on the record and watch the movie behind closed eyes. As he visualized Obi-Wan’s sacrifice and the Mos Eisley cantina, he drew associations between sounds and environments that have informed his creative choices ever since.
“The most impactful image [in ‘Star Wars’] was the desert planet — the separation of the sand and sky. It was so open and simple. It’s a moving painting with orchestral music and little to no dialogue for a long amount of time. Very avant-garde,” McFadden says. “No other ‘Star Wars’ installment did that. I want my music rooted in the ground with my head in the clouds.”
He associates sandy, earthy music with African and Latin genres, like the samba he recorded in São Paulo for “The Garden.” It’s grounded in a specific place, carrying with it all the tastes, smells and textures McFadden can relive from that trip.
By contrast, the sky and the air represent wonder and possibility, like what he felt when he first heard Laurie Anderson’s computerized psychedelic anthem, “O Superman,” in 1982. In searching for that similar feeling on the album, he turned to compilations. One of them was “Alternative Funk: Folie Distinguée” (1985), which included “Megamix” by the French industrial pioneers Vox Populi.
“That changed the trajectory of the whole album. [‘Megamix’] was very cyberpunk. Also rooted in old-school, so it spoke to my youth, but it’s through a psychedelic filter and musique concrète,” McFadden says. “When I heard this music, I said, ‘That’s the kind of music I want to make now.’ All that drum break-y rap stuff. I thought that’s what I wanted to do. Not anymore.”
Cut Chemist’s “Expert of None” is a four-part event series in Venice, where he riffs through 25,000 records to link “Star Wars” imagery, global rhythms and risky studio experiments.
(Annie Noelker / For The Times)
McFadden directly sampled the “Megamix” electro beat on “Storm,” from “The Audience’s Listening,” prefacing the drop with alien sonics before Edan and Mr. Lif deliver their rap verses. But McFadden’s turn away from core hip-hop can also be heard throughout the album in the riskier choices, like purposefully employing sloppy scratches on “(My 1st) Big Break.”
“The end is very drunk. It adds to the chaos, which is the point. I like those decisions. It’s not clean and technical,” McFadden says. “I took so many chances and decided to do something dangerous that was counterintuitive.”
One element that balances out the danger is the rapper Hymnal, real name Terry Robinson. He contributed a verse to “What’s the Altitude” (the second most-streamed song on McFadden’s Spotify at more than 8 million), and they have been friends since they were 11 years old.
“We’ve been through a whole lot of life together. To make this song together as friends, it’s playful,” McFadden says. But part of the safety and familiarity of their collaboration is exploring new kinds of music together. Robinson introduced him to a lot of the airy, psychedelic sounds he loves, like Frank Zappa, and the imagery that plays in McFadden’s mind when he listens back to the danceable breakbeat is them together at a rave in the early ‘90s.
“We would go to raves and be the hip-hop kids. What are we doing here? Let’s hang out and be our hip-hop selves in the midst of the lights, the loud music and all this recreational drug use,” McFadden says. “We’re two friends that have known each other going into this uncharted musical direction.”
McFadden doesn’t mention if Robinson is the one who led him to the raves. But regardless of how he ended up there, he is assured that 20 years later, everyone hearing “The Audience’s Listening” can feel the same way he felt there, and in Brazil, and in the Chinese Theatre watching “Star Wars.”
After 30 years of innovation in the L.A. music scene, Cut Chemist’s résumé of achievements is too long to list. Some highlights include producing and DJing for the famed rap group Jurassic 5, and his first solo album, “The Audience’s Listening” (2006), which cleared the top 10 on Billboard’s Dance/Electronic chart.
And yet, as a self-described isolationist, said résumé might not exist if he were left to his own devices.
“If it were up to me, I would just lock myself in a room and not go anywhere. But people are like, ‘Hey, you want to come to Brazil?’” Cut Chemist, real name Lucas McFadden, explains, referring to teaching at the Red Bull Music Academy in São Paulo back in 2002. On that trip, fellow legendary producer and turntablist Madlib forced him to explore the city (they were sharing a hotel room). “It’s like I’m being led around by other people to live life.”
McFadden has been led to many musical benchmarks in his artistic evolution. In 1977, when he was 4 years old, his parents brought him to see “Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope” at the Chinese Theatre. A few years later, in the mid-’90s, a friend beckoned him to make the journey from Hollywood to the South Bay to check out Good Life Cafe, where he saw his all-time greatest inspiration, L.A. alternative hip-hop pioneers Freestyle Fellowship.
When Madlib led him out of the hotel room in São Paulo, all the samba schools were training rigorously for the Carnival. A few years later McFadden returned to sample live samba for “The Garden,” the song from “The Audience’s Listening” that has nearly 11 million Spotify streams, the most in his solo discography.
“I tie a lot of my musical choices to real-life experiences that I otherwise wouldn’t do,” McFadden says. “As I come back home and isolate, I romanticize about the past, and the music is the best way for me to live that. I get to watch my own soundtrack through the music.”
Now, after being led to so many incredible opportunities, McFadden is sharing his soundtrack via “Expert of None,” a monthly four-part event series running from May to August at Only the Wild Ones in Venice, presented in partnership with online publication Dust & Grooves. At each installment, he discussed a specific topic as he sorts through different records from his collection of over 25,000.
A self-described isolationist, Lucas McFadden has relied on friends and mentors, from Madlib to Freestyle Fellowship, to drag him into the scenes that later define his most beloved tracks.
(Annie Noelker / For The Times)
The first event was titled “Imagining Music.” McFadden described his fascination with the relationship between music and imagery, starting with “Star Wars.” The second event, “Tuned In, Comped Out,” was about discovering music through compilations. Event 3, “To All My Teachers,” dove into how his mentors and peers brought their emotion into recommendations. The fourth event coming Sunday is called “Building the Garden,” culminating in how all of the previous subjects fed “The Audience’s Listening.”
Beginning with “Star Wars,” McFadden’s parents couldn’t take him to the theater every day like he wanted, he says, so they bought him the soundtrack. He would put on the record and watch the movie behind closed eyes. As he visualized Obi-Wan’s sacrifice and the Mos Eisley cantina, he drew associations between sounds and environments that have informed his creative choices ever since.
“The most impactful image [in ‘Star Wars’] was the desert planet — the separation of the sand and sky. It was so open and simple. It’s a moving painting with orchestral music and little to no dialogue for a long amount of time. Very avant-garde,” McFadden says. “No other ‘Star Wars’ installment did that. I want my music rooted in the ground with my head in the clouds.”
He associates sandy, earthy music with African and Latin genres, like the samba he recorded in São Paulo for “The Garden.” It’s grounded in a specific place, carrying with it all the tastes, smells and textures McFadden can relive from that trip.
By contrast, the sky and the air represent wonder and possibility, like what he felt when he first heard Laurie Anderson’s computerized psychedelic anthem, “O Superman,” in 1982. In searching for that similar feeling on the album, he turned to compilations. One of them was “Alternative Funk: Folie Distinguée” (1985), which included “Megamix” by the French industrial pioneers Vox Populi.
“That changed the trajectory of the whole album. [‘Megamix’] was very cyberpunk. Also rooted in old-school, so it spoke to my youth, but it’s through a psychedelic filter and musique concrète,” McFadden says. “When I heard this music, I said, ‘That’s the kind of music I want to make now.’ All that drum break-y rap stuff. I thought that’s what I wanted to do. Not anymore.”
Cut Chemist’s “Expert of None” is a four-part event series in Venice, where he riffs through 25,000 records to link “Star Wars” imagery, global rhythms and risky studio experiments.
(Annie Noelker / For The Times)
McFadden directly sampled the “Megamix” electro beat on “Storm,” from “The Audience’s Listening,” prefacing the drop with alien sonics before Edan and Mr. Lif deliver their rap verses. But McFadden’s turn away from core hip-hop can also be heard throughout the album in the riskier choices, like purposefully employing sloppy scratches on “(My 1st) Big Break.”
“The end is very drunk. It adds to the chaos, which is the point. I like those decisions. It’s not clean and technical,” McFadden says. “I took so many chances and decided to do something dangerous that was counterintuitive.”
One element that balances out the danger is the rapper Hymnal, real name Terry Robinson. He contributed a verse to “What’s the Altitude” (the second most-streamed song on McFadden’s Spotify at more than 8 million), and they have been friends since they were 11 years old.
“We’ve been through a whole lot of life together. To make this song together as friends, it’s playful,” McFadden says. But part of the safety and familiarity of their collaboration is exploring new kinds of music together. Robinson introduced him to a lot of the airy, psychedelic sounds he loves, like Frank Zappa, and the imagery that plays in McFadden’s mind when he listens back to the danceable breakbeat is them together at a rave in the early ‘90s.
“We would go to raves and be the hip-hop kids. What are we doing here? Let’s hang out and be our hip-hop selves in the midst of the lights, the loud music and all this recreational drug use,” McFadden says. “We’re two friends that have known each other going into this uncharted musical direction.”
McFadden doesn’t mention if Robinson is the one who led him to the raves. But regardless of how he ended up there, he is assured that 20 years later, everyone hearing “The Audience’s Listening” can feel the same way he felt there, and in Brazil, and in the Chinese Theatre watching “Star Wars.”
After 30 years of innovation in the L.A. music scene, Cut Chemist’s résumé of achievements is too long to list. Some highlights include producing and DJing for the famed rap group Jurassic 5, and his first solo album, “The Audience’s Listening” (2006), which cleared the top 10 on Billboard’s Dance/Electronic chart.
And yet, as a self-described isolationist, said résumé might not exist if he were left to his own devices.
“If it were up to me, I would just lock myself in a room and not go anywhere. But people are like, ‘Hey, you want to come to Brazil?’” Cut Chemist, real name Lucas McFadden, explains, referring to teaching at the Red Bull Music Academy in São Paulo back in 2002. On that trip, fellow legendary producer and turntablist Madlib forced him to explore the city (they were sharing a hotel room). “It’s like I’m being led around by other people to live life.”
McFadden has been led to many musical benchmarks in his artistic evolution. In 1977, when he was 4 years old, his parents brought him to see “Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope” at the Chinese Theatre. A few years later, in the mid-’90s, a friend beckoned him to make the journey from Hollywood to the South Bay to check out Good Life Cafe, where he saw his all-time greatest inspiration, L.A. alternative hip-hop pioneers Freestyle Fellowship.
When Madlib led him out of the hotel room in São Paulo, all the samba schools were training rigorously for the Carnival. A few years later McFadden returned to sample live samba for “The Garden,” the song from “The Audience’s Listening” that has nearly 11 million Spotify streams, the most in his solo discography.
“I tie a lot of my musical choices to real-life experiences that I otherwise wouldn’t do,” McFadden says. “As I come back home and isolate, I romanticize about the past, and the music is the best way for me to live that. I get to watch my own soundtrack through the music.”
Now, after being led to so many incredible opportunities, McFadden is sharing his soundtrack via “Expert of None,” a monthly four-part event series running from May to August at Only the Wild Ones in Venice, presented in partnership with online publication Dust & Grooves. At each installment, he discussed a specific topic as he sorts through different records from his collection of over 25,000.
A self-described isolationist, Lucas McFadden has relied on friends and mentors, from Madlib to Freestyle Fellowship, to drag him into the scenes that later define his most beloved tracks.
(Annie Noelker / For The Times)
The first event was titled “Imagining Music.” McFadden described his fascination with the relationship between music and imagery, starting with “Star Wars.” The second event, “Tuned In, Comped Out,” was about discovering music through compilations. Event 3, “To All My Teachers,” dove into how his mentors and peers brought their emotion into recommendations. The fourth event coming Sunday is called “Building the Garden,” culminating in how all of the previous subjects fed “The Audience’s Listening.”
Beginning with “Star Wars,” McFadden’s parents couldn’t take him to the theater every day like he wanted, he says, so they bought him the soundtrack. He would put on the record and watch the movie behind closed eyes. As he visualized Obi-Wan’s sacrifice and the Mos Eisley cantina, he drew associations between sounds and environments that have informed his creative choices ever since.
“The most impactful image [in ‘Star Wars’] was the desert planet — the separation of the sand and sky. It was so open and simple. It’s a moving painting with orchestral music and little to no dialogue for a long amount of time. Very avant-garde,” McFadden says. “No other ‘Star Wars’ installment did that. I want my music rooted in the ground with my head in the clouds.”
He associates sandy, earthy music with African and Latin genres, like the samba he recorded in São Paulo for “The Garden.” It’s grounded in a specific place, carrying with it all the tastes, smells and textures McFadden can relive from that trip.
By contrast, the sky and the air represent wonder and possibility, like what he felt when he first heard Laurie Anderson’s computerized psychedelic anthem, “O Superman,” in 1982. In searching for that similar feeling on the album, he turned to compilations. One of them was “Alternative Funk: Folie Distinguée” (1985), which included “Megamix” by the French industrial pioneers Vox Populi.
“That changed the trajectory of the whole album. [‘Megamix’] was very cyberpunk. Also rooted in old-school, so it spoke to my youth, but it’s through a psychedelic filter and musique concrète,” McFadden says. “When I heard this music, I said, ‘That’s the kind of music I want to make now.’ All that drum break-y rap stuff. I thought that’s what I wanted to do. Not anymore.”
Cut Chemist’s “Expert of None” is a four-part event series in Venice, where he riffs through 25,000 records to link “Star Wars” imagery, global rhythms and risky studio experiments.
(Annie Noelker / For The Times)
McFadden directly sampled the “Megamix” electro beat on “Storm,” from “The Audience’s Listening,” prefacing the drop with alien sonics before Edan and Mr. Lif deliver their rap verses. But McFadden’s turn away from core hip-hop can also be heard throughout the album in the riskier choices, like purposefully employing sloppy scratches on “(My 1st) Big Break.”
“The end is very drunk. It adds to the chaos, which is the point. I like those decisions. It’s not clean and technical,” McFadden says. “I took so many chances and decided to do something dangerous that was counterintuitive.”
One element that balances out the danger is the rapper Hymnal, real name Terry Robinson. He contributed a verse to “What’s the Altitude” (the second most-streamed song on McFadden’s Spotify at more than 8 million), and they have been friends since they were 11 years old.
“We’ve been through a whole lot of life together. To make this song together as friends, it’s playful,” McFadden says. But part of the safety and familiarity of their collaboration is exploring new kinds of music together. Robinson introduced him to a lot of the airy, psychedelic sounds he loves, like Frank Zappa, and the imagery that plays in McFadden’s mind when he listens back to the danceable breakbeat is them together at a rave in the early ‘90s.
“We would go to raves and be the hip-hop kids. What are we doing here? Let’s hang out and be our hip-hop selves in the midst of the lights, the loud music and all this recreational drug use,” McFadden says. “We’re two friends that have known each other going into this uncharted musical direction.”
McFadden doesn’t mention if Robinson is the one who led him to the raves. But regardless of how he ended up there, he is assured that 20 years later, everyone hearing “The Audience’s Listening” can feel the same way he felt there, and in Brazil, and in the Chinese Theatre watching “Star Wars.”
