N.A.S.A. SIGN TO DOMINO PUBLISHING

N.A.S.A. | 11/02/09

Image: nasa sign

We are extremely proud to announce that N.A.S.A. aka North America / South America have signed to Domino Publishing.

N.A.S.A., and their worldwide debut The Spirit of Apollo, is an ongoing creative collaboration between two lifelong music aficionados, Squeak E. Clean and DJ Zegon, and their friends, friends of friends and musical heroes.

While N.A.S.A. stands for North America/South America and contains a number of superstar artists from both coasts of the U.S., it is about as far from a tension-building geographical showdown as a record can get. Rather, The Spirit of Apollo was born with the righteous goal of bringing people together through music and art, and that is exactly what masterminds Sam Spiegel (Squeak E. Clean) and Ze Gonzales (DJ Zegon) have done.

Unexpected collaborations abound on the seventeen track release. Tom Waits growls over Kool Keith, Karen O taunts while Ol' Dirty Bastard gives shoutouts to Wu Tang and N.A.S.A from the grave, and David Byrne, Chuck D and others expound on the evils of "Money." In spite of the range of performers, the pairings seem organic, inspired and make perfect sense on the first listen, never coming off as ironic or impulsive. Spiegel explains that the tracks themselves dictated who would be approached to lend a voice, revealing the larger vision behind the project: "we never said, ‘let's make a track for this person.' We'd usually make something we liked, and then as we were starting to write the song, it would tend to go in a direction that we'd be like, ‘this sounds like George Clinton,' or ‘this sounds like Method Man.' We would start to feel the song out, and feel the artist through the song as we did it. Basically, we'd sit around as we were making these tracks and say the nuttiest combination of names, like our dream of who we could get on the song. It's crazy, a lot of times they actually happened." That passion and appreciation for music is the driving force behind The Spirit of Apollo. Conceived in a crowded party in Sao Paulo and nurtured by a shared love of vintage Brazilian soul and funk records, N.A.S.A. was born when Spiegel and Gonzales got together in a studio and hit "record." "WE met at DVNO's studio party," Spiegel reminisces. "The next day we were flipping a Toni Tornado sample at my studio which later became the song ‘Hip Hop' with Fatlip, KRS One, and Slim Kid Tre." Five years later, after thousands of miles traveled, many favors called in, countless hours spent in recording studios, bartered, traded and out of pocket, N.A.S.A. landed at Anti Records, a label that is home to other likeminded visionaries such as Zack de la Rocha, Nick Cave and N.A.S.A.-guest vocalist Tom Waits.