Beastie Boys’ Mike D and Cat Power Team With Cassius on New Single "Action"

Beastie Boys' Mike D and Cat Power Team With Cassius on New Single "Action"

Mike D photo by Dimitrios Kambouris/WireImage

Cassius haven’t released a proper album since 2006′s 15 Again, but Philippe Zdar — one-half of the French electronic duo, along with Boom Bass — has stayed busy as a mixer and producer. His credits include albums by Phoenix, the Rapture, Kindness, Chromeo, and Kele, as well as the Beastie Boys and Cat Power. Those last two return the favor on Cassius’ new single “Action,” which features guest vocals from the Beasties’ Mike D and Cat Power’s Chan Marshall. The track premiered on Annie Mac’s Radio 1 show today.

Mike D told Pitchfork the collaboration came about as Zdar was playing tracks for him and Marshall in New York City. “I did bring a couple bottles of wine to the studio,” Mike D said. “And then started writing my part and went from there.” He added: “The song came with this world liberation theme and then I came with a modern-day relationship theme, and somehow the two went together. It’s kind of like toast and Vegemite go together only in Australia.”

The Beastie Boys member said he had known Zdar since the producer mixed the Beasties’ 2011 album Hot Sauce Committee Part Two, and that he, Zdar, and Boom Bass share a strong affinity for the early days of disco. “I’m really kind of a little bit romantic for the lost era,” he said. “There’s a lot of us that are — kind like James Murphy, same thing — we feel like it’s this magic era that happened before us. And it wasn’t even necessarily disco. It was a promise of how creative a DJ could be with funk, soul, Italo — whatever you want to call it — music to make this experience. It was the beginning of the DJ as a headliner.”

Mike D explained that “Action” is “in a sense capturing that era of a Compass Point record that gets played in the Loft in New York City, but today.” 

Zdar told Pitchfork the only collaboration that Cassius had scheduled during their visit to New York that spawned “Action” was with Marshall, but the duo met Mike D for lunch and the process followed naturally from there. “Suddenly we were having a coffee and we said, ‘Why don’t we ask Mike if we wants to rap on the track,’” Zdar recalled. “And then he arrived in the studio and after one minute in the studio — and Chan was doing our vocals — he said, ‘I think I like this thing.’ They talked together and it was done in three hours.”

Aside from Zdar’s production work, Cassius have also stayed prominent through being sampled on Jay Z and Kanye West’s 2011 collaborative album Watch the Throne. “He is one of the biggest music lovers we ever met,” Zdar told Pitchfork about West. “That’s not something you can imagine when you look at everything about him. When you are in the studio, you put a great track on the system, he becomes like he is 14.”

Though the Cassius camp is tight-lipped about their own possible plans beyond “Action,” Zdar told Pitchfork that he recently visited Phoenix in the studio, where they were working on a new album. “It’s really something happening and really new in a way,” he said. “They have to finish it.”

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