Singled Out: Chris Lawhorn's Fugazi Edits

Fugazi Edits is my forthcoming album of instrumental music created using samples from the band Fugazi's catalog. In an attempt to keep some parts of the album straightforward, the track names are simply lists of the songs sampled. To that end, the album opener is entitled "Nice New Outfit / Greed / Walken's Syndrome / Facet Squared / No Surprise."

Of all the tracks on the album, this is the likeliest to pass for an actual Fugazi instrumental. It's the first track I made. It's one of two tracks that sample five different songs, as the rest of the tracks employed four songs apiece. And, I wasn't yet sure how I wanted to approach the album. So, the track is pretty linear and the samples are layered in a fairly obvious way.

Because it was the first track, I remember pretty clearly the actual mixing. I was playing a six week residency on South Padre Island during spring break. So, I spent most of that span working on Fugazi Edits during the day and then playing pop and dance in the clubs at night.

As production started, I wondered if the projects would seep into each other. In particular, I thought I might find myself mixing Fugazi drum breaks into my club sets or creating a more beat-heavy, dance-oriented album than I'd expected.

If anything, the opposite was true. I can't say that my DJ sets got poppier as the month went on--as they were already pretty heavy on hits and floor fillers. But, getting that out of my system at night probably allowed me to make more adventurous, less coherent approaches to the album by day.

In any event, that's the direction the album went and my best guesses as to why it shaped up the way it did.