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Adam Freeland is one of the world’s dance music DJ icons, famed for his neo-electro club funk that kicks with rock-star attitude. For his new album, COPE™, Freeland put his guitars where his mouth is, recruiting everyone from Tommy Lee to DEVO legend Jerry Casale to Brody Dalle to Joey Santiago of the Pixies for the most exciting rock-electronic hybrid in recent memory. The motley crew that Freeland assembled for COPE™could only happen in Los Angeles, as Freeland himself explained in a candid Kspace Q&A :

Kspace: So, how did your new album COPE™ come about?

Adam Freeland: My manager locked me in a room with an “heroic” dose of magic mushrooms and one Alex Metric [COPE™’s co-producer and a rising electronic music star/DJ in his own right] and refused to open the door until it was done.

Kspace: And now the real answer…

Adam Freeland: My musical taste has broadened a lot since [Freeland’s debut artist album from 2003] Now And Them. I love shoegazer stuff, desert rock and pulsing throbbing drones, and obviously I love super well-produced electronic mayhem. On COPE™, I wanted to combine all those things: imagine Loveless meets Black Rebel Motorcycle Club on the dancefloor. Those are the influences that set the ship on its course. The album is basically the music I wanted to hear, but the end result never really comes out how you anticipate.

Kspace: To make COPE™, you moved to California – Los Angeles to be exact. How did that location affect the music you were making?

Adam Freeland: Well, I moved to L.A. more for a girl than “to make the album,” but L.A. had a big influence, primarily by way of the people I got to collaborate with; I’d never so effortlessly been able work with those kind of guys living in Brighton. L.A. is really buzzing right now: every night of the week, there’s a band, artist, or DJ that I want to see, so I’ve been exposing myself to a lot more live music on a regular basis. It’s all there, compared to when I lived in the other places I had been living. Tony Bevilacqua, of Distillers/Spinerette fame, was a big influence on the record; his guitar playing is so insanely good. Tommy Lee played some really amazing drum parts: he was so enthusiastic about nailing the best drum sounds. [Marilyn Manson/ Nine Inch Nails bassist] Twiggy Ramirez really pursued lots of different angles on the his parts; in fact, many of the sounds people thing are guitars or synths are actually Twiggy playing through his mad pedals! Of course, meeting Kurt Baumann, the guy who would become the frontman in my band, in my backyard really shifted the album to a whole new level. Brody Dalle from Spinnerette and Jerry Casale from DEVO, too, are amazing people, really enthusiastic to nail something unique. Only in L.A. would you meet a cast of characters as diverse as this, and so effortlessly. I’m going to get boring if I keep going on about all the things I like about it!

Kspace: What attracted you to the area beyond the music?

Adam Freeland: I have a great crew of friends there. It’s all about good people. I’ve been going to L.A. for years and never really liked it – all the clichés rang true. But once I met a killer crew of people, I saw a whole different, amazing side that I’d missed on my DJ jaunts. And I’m a Brit – we are obsessed with the weather, and the weather in L.A. ROOOOOOOOOOLZ! It’s hard not to be very happy when that sun is hitting your skin, and all the nature so close by – those big sequoia trees are pretty unbelievably epic. Joshua Tree is probably my favorite place on earth, and it’s just down the road; I’ve had some great moments where we hear there’s a meteor storm coming, and we just jump in the car with some tunes, some rugs and a posse and cruise out to Joshua Tree in the middle of the night and watch meteors burn across the sky until the sun comes up. The food is pretty special, too. I’ve lived in the U.K., Australia, Indonesia, and Ibiza since I’ve been a heavily touring artist. While some have great lifestyle and cultural stimulation, L.A. has the best balance of anywhere I can think of. As well, the Burning Man festival and the people I’ve met through going there have also really cemented my love of the West Coast vibes. It’s nice to know all those options are there, even as a psychological crutch, as in reality I’ve been deep in studio time when I haven’t been on the road. I don’t nearly get enough surf or boarding days!

Kspace: What are some of your great surfing and snowboarding journeys?

Adam Freeland: I bizarrely got booked to play Sean White’s house party at the X-Games, so I went there with a friend…

Kspace: That would be me…

Adam Freeland: …And spendt a couple of days riding powder with Danny Martin, the snowboard guru. That was a lot of fun: I’ve never really had clear powder like that before; it’s not like that in Europe. But when I DJ’ed the Sean White party, all these kids living this amazing lifestyle, who I thought would be coolest people on earth, all they wanted to hear was really bad pop music! I kind of resigned myself from behind the turntables, drunk their champagne, stole their girlfriends, then shredded powder the next day! And when I was living in Bali a couple of years ago, I was surfing a lot, but I’m not good enough to hit those gnarly waves. I’m more of a cruising longboard dude, but it was wicked to live in Bali, have that great lifestyle, fly ‘round the world every weekend DJing, and then back to paradise every Sunday night.

Kspace: I understand you also ride an electric skateboard…

The X-Skate – it’s amazing! It’s like a long skateboard with a big battery under it and a remote control trigger. It gets up to 25 mph, which is MUCH faster than it sounds on a skateboard! It freaks people out when you pass them in their cars cruising up a hill in Silverlake! It really comes into its own late at night on these huge expanses of polished marble floor in the big, flat empty malls in Beverly Hills.

Kspace: How has your love of board sports influenced your music? I mean, you did call your first mix album back in ’96 “Coastal Breaks”…

Adam Freeland: People always tell me they hear waves in my music. Snowboarding or surfing don’t necessarily directly influence my music, but the headspace I get from doing those things gives me good clarity. Sometimes I forget the bigger picture of why I am creating in the first place – it’s beyond just ‘”trying to get an album out.” If you aren’t part of the solution, you are part of the problem. I strive to be mind blowing, but I still have a long way to go…
UNDER CONTROL VIDEO:

Kspace: Speaking of mind blowing, from the album’s title to its artwork to the lyrics, it seems like there’s a concept behind COPE™. Is that the case?

Adam Freeland: It kind of follows from the message of [Freeland’s worldwide 2003 top 40 hit] “We Want Your Soul” (http://vimeo.com/ 4429108), but it’s a bit more fun. COPE™ is a drug, the wonder drug of all drugs. Why worry about your relationship falling apart, terrorism, you house being repossessed, that brain tumour when you can “COPE™”? It’s really kind of like Aldous Huxley’s soma for the 2012-bound generation. Oprah made me do it! I watched an afternoon of Oprah and saw all these pharmaceutical ads, and I got freaked out! The pill- popping culture we live in, particularly in America, has the attitude of “we’ll give you the problem, and sell you the cure.” There’s a cure for everything, even if it’s not really a cure: I wanted to have some fun poking at that idea, so I created the best drug ever.

Kspace: So where can I cop me some COPE™?

Adam Freeland: You’ll have to buy the album here, then sit down for 54 minutes everyday and ingest it aurally….meanwhile do yourself a favor and download the “ADAM FREELAND WENT TO BRIGHTON AND ALL WE GOT WAS THIS LOUSY MIXTAPE” HERE

DAFT PUNK vs FREELAND – AER OBAMA:

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