While Matt “Smoke” Smokovich was producing the second full-length release by his friend and K Records artist Eprhyme, an idea emerged: Why not ask the legendary indie label if he could mine their catalog for beats?
The result is All Your Friend’s Friends, an effusive 18-track compilation that features performances from 30-some MCs set to beats that Smoke meticulously crafted from fragments of K’s catalog. The album is an unexpected, and undeniable, bright spot in the label’s uneven hip-hop history. We wanted to know more about how it happened.
SW:
Did you know which K artists you were going to pull from going into this project?
Smokovich: Quite honestly, I really didn’t know too much about K before I went into this. I knew maybe three or four of their acts.
How did you select the samples, then?
They opened the vaults to me and said “Here you go, take all these albums.” I put everything on a hard drive and started going through it without any knowledge of what it was. That allowed me to work without having any context about what it was and just picking stuff I liked.
Did you actually listen to the entire catalog?
They didn’t give me everything. I know there were a couple things missing, and they gave me a few guidelines, like you can’t sample certain artists because the rights were no longer K’s and it could be messy. But quite honestly I wouldn’t have gone for Modest Mouse anyway.
There are a few artists that you return to multiple times throughout the 18 tracks. Jeremy Jay in particular shows up a lot. Why?
Jeremy Jay’s stuff is really poppy and really punchy, and it’s very sample-able. I didn’t know who Jeremy Jay was before I started working on this project, but I definitely have all of his albums on my phone now; I listen to them a lot.
What about the Microphones?
The thing I liked about the Microphones is that a lot of their music was really cool and ambient and had, like, a streamline going through it. It was kind of an open canvas for me to do whatever I wanted to with it.
How did you select the artists who were going to rap over these tracks?
When I make a beat, I can hear someone over it. As the beats unfolded, I automatically thought, I can hear Onry Ozzborn, or I hear Candidt on this. The beats kind of selected them.
mbaumgarten@seattleweekly.com
ALBUM RELEASE PARTY With Onry Ozzborn, Xperience, Wildcard, Candidt, Everybody Weekend, and Calvin Johnson. Rendezvous, 2322 Second Ave., 441-5823, jewelboxtheater.com. 21 and over. $8. 8 p.m. Thurs., Nov. 13.
