NASA - The Spirit of Apollo

The Spirit of Apollo comes to us as the debut album of N.A.S.A., a collaborative effort from L.A. producers/DJs Squeak E. Clean and DJ Zegon. N.A.S.A. stands for “North America/South America,” reflecting on the duo’s cultural origins (United States and Brazil, more specifically) and combining their creative endeavors.

The first thing that might catch your eyes and ears is the impressive guest list on the album, with seemingly disparate artists like David Byrne, M.I.A., Tom Waits, and Method Man dropping by to add some flavor to the music. This isn’t something you can really overlook, either, with thirty-eight guest artists spread over seventeen tracks. With this many cooks in the kitchen, it’s easy to get a messy album of phoned-in material that never comes together. This is where the power of N.A.S.A shines - this album is completely coherent. It flows extremely well, no one sounds out of place, and the music seamlessly moves from Brazilian funk to old-school hip hop to L.A. club music to down-tempo. It all works. And that’s impressive.

There are times that the album seems accessible to the point that the music snob in me wants to write this album off and talk about how I don’t care for Karen O, but the truth is I keep coming back to this album. It’s really compelling, and unexpected. I knew nothing of either producer going in to this album, but it didn’t take me long to realize that these were two guys who grew up on a large variety of music, and really understood well how it all connected and overlapped. To a certain extent, how well the album works track by track is defined by who is on the particular track, but NASA do a good job in pooling together a talented group of musicians, and the album works more than it fails and says a lot of interesting things. What more could one ask for?