I met Tucker Martine just over 20 years ago, and we quickly began working together and became good friends.

Early on he worked mostly as an engineer for my own projects. One thing that was very flattering about Tucker was that he knew my music pretty well- including some very early projects of mine. (It goes without saying that I am not exactly a household name.)

One day, maybe 15 years ago, he said to me, “When are you going to make another solo record?” By solo record he did not mean a solo piano record, but rather a project that wasn’t a band. The record “Dinner At Eight”, later released on Nonesuch as “This New Generation”, was a good example of this. I used mostly keyboards and samples and drum machines to make tracks and then invited friends to add things here and then. The music wasn’t intended to be performed, although some of the pieces morphed into live shows in various configurations.

I told him I didn’t have any plans, and suggested we do something together. Of course by this time Pro Tools and Logic had become common work platforms- considerably expanding the possibilities, both for creativity and endless wrong turns. (Dinner at Eight was made on a reel to reel 8 track machine).

We sort of muddled around at first. We worked in Logic, my preferred work space, and looped various things from old records, added tracks, and invited a few friends to help. We made a few demo mixes, and some friends at the label Terminus expressed interest and were willing to back the project.

At this point we had a lot of sorting out to do, then went back in the studio for a decent chunk of time, moved everything into Pro Tools, recorded a lot more friends, and then mixed. We worked collaboratively at every stage, but unsurprisingly I was little more likely to come up with chords and structures, but when it came to mixing Tucker was definitely at the helm. The stuff he does with all the cut and paste, and a million other aspects of the processing and panning, etc. was really amazing and tremendously creative.

The end result was Mylab, and this track is the opening track for the CD, entitled “Pop Client”. Some of the guests include Reggie Watts, Robin Holcomb, Eyvind Kang, Bill Frisell, Skerik, Doug Wieselman, Danny Barnes, Tim Young, Keith Lowe, Bobby Previte, and on and on- it’s really quite a list.

This is one of those projects I am tremendously proud of, and every time I hear it I am surprised. Its also one of those projects that doesn’t really fit in to any assumptions most people have of my music, or Tucker’s I suppose, which is always frustrating, because those assumptions don’t make any sense. We got a bunch of really stellar press, and one very bad review in Downbeat in which the record was accused of being just a bunch of slick production with no compositional sensibility or real content. I couldn’t agree less.

I hope you enjoy the music.