We all have our favorite musical collaborations. When your favorite artists from each of your favorite bands joined up for a song or maybe a whole album, it was the best. Old school groups like Cream and The Traveling Wilburys were doing it back in the day. (Mega old school: Imagine if Mozart actually jammed out with Beethoven and Vivaldi on a few concertos?)
Some of my favorite new school maelstroms are Handsome Boy Modeling School and Colonel Claypool's Bucket of Bernie Brains. I've recently stumbled across a collaboration of epic vision that puts all that came before to rest.
You need to listen to N.A.S.A.
N.A.S.A. stands for North America/South America. This duo consists of North American based producer Squeak E. Clean (Spike Jonze's brother Sam Spiegel) and the South America producer (and pro skateboarder) DJ Zegon. These guys just love music so much that they spent five years making the album "The Spirit of Apollo". When it was finished there would be over 40 of today's artists from around the world converging into one project.
Where else can you have the Talking Heads on a track with Charli 2na?
What about the Red Hot Chili Pepper guitarist John Fruscanite backing up the Wu Tang Clan's RZA?
When Tom Waits is on the same song as Kool Kieth, you know this is not your average musical listening experience. Other names include George Clinton, KRS-One, Del the funky homosapien... The list keeps on going.
Now on top of all this fantastic audio talent, they also chose to tap the visual world of graphic design and animation. Skateboard photographer Mark Gonzales, artists Marcel Dzama, The Date Farmers and Shepard Fairey. (of the Obama "Hope" poster fame)
All these images would be funneled and animated by industry heavyweights Syd Garon, Paul Griswold and Splunny. It takes a great deal of forethought to have music videos for almost every song an the album, Each one as different as the next.
Bottom line: Squeak & Zegon are reaching new worlds without even having to leave this one. In my opinion, N.A.S.A. is the best music collaboration to come out of 2009.
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