The latest album is a collaboration with boom bap true school hip hop producer extraordinaire David KelseyBasset aka Rube, aka Saul Goode. Big Dave has been putting out vinyl all over the world through various labels and is always cooking up something dastardly in his laboratory of mad sound science. His weapon of choice is a famous vintage sampler sequencer called the SP1200. It's from the early 90's and the likes of RZA (Wu Tang Clan) and many more famously used to make classics. Our friend Dave has been working with this tool since '92! The wildest part? They are so sought after that you can buy them, if you can find them, for 10k, easy.

So Dave and I first met via email (and myspace probably) somewhere approaching twenty years ago when a mutual friend introduced us via our work and we started collaborating. I played his record (vinyl) release at the 331 Club in Minneapolis, when he invited me to rap with he and a small band. There were plenty of Twin Cities Hip Hop luminaries in attendance - not the least of which, Mikey Larson aka Eyedea; who was humble and generous. I was honored by his comments about my performance.
So at one point over the last few years or so, I decided to throw him a bunch of acapellas I had on my hard drive from projects that didn't come to fruition with other producers, collaborations that didn't get much shine, or just other stuff that was taking a while to get out that I thought could do well with another life over his beautiful instrumentals. I had a few titles loaded up while he continued to remix and remix and redo arrangements and samples and drum tracks - the whole works. Then at one point, it hit me: Edgar Allen Poe Dameron. And that's when everything got turned up on this project. Dave began rebuilding the whole thing, sending me new versions of all these pieces with Star Wars sound fx and dialog samples and whatnot, and, after a heart breaking loss of files in Dave's labs, we were a little stuck in place. In fact, he felt such a way about it, he didn't tell me, responding to my messages that he "needed to collect [his] thoughts' before connecting about finalizing the album.

Later I learned that he had gone through all of the so called stages of grief after losing the whole thing, aside from mixes he had been sending me that were not up to snuff, sonically speaking. Well, once he admitted what was going on, we decided to put it out anyway; he salvaging what he could and rebuilding what he could, and me mixing my ass off to lift the production value of the whole thing. I didn't realize how heavy of a process it would be when, in mid-April, I agreed that we should drop the album on May the Fourth. More on that later :)

Definitely check out that album which you can stream, by, share, and whatnot - all or any of which would be a huge help. You have our many and sincerest thanks in advance. In addition, enjoy this collection of early versions of the songs to can get a glimpse of where this project has been and is coming from. Enjoy!

Love, Appreciation, and Solidarity,

See