Pitchfork

The six years it took for the Beastie Boys to follow Hello Nasty with To the 5 Boroughs may have doubled their usual time between full-length releases, but with their new album, The Mix-Up, scheduled for a June 26 release on Capitol, Mike D told Pitchfork that the trio are "going back to our regular average."

He also said the album's title "is a bit of a double entendre, if you will. Any record we make is always about combining different ideas or different influences we have, and then with this record, it's an instrumental album. There are no vocals, no samples. We played everything. But as different as that might be from To the 5 Boroughs, it's equally different from instrumental songs we've done before, like the ones that were on The In Sound From Way Out! That was kind of one direction and this one [has] different influences, like Public Image Ltd., Gang of Four, the Slits, Killing Joke."

Even though The Mix-Up is a "post-punk instrumental" album, the Beasties have no plans to ditch vocals for good. In fact, they are currently planning another version of the album that will feature collaborations with "a pretty wide array" of "mostly newer" vocalists.

Mike explained that The Mix-Up took shape out of the need for variety. "On To the 5 Boroughs, we all put down the instruments and sat behind the computers and made music that way. [On] this record, we went 180 again and said, 'Okay, let's not sit behind the computers. Let's just play some music together and kind of see what happens that way.'

"What we do a lot is listen to music together, things that we're inspired by, everything from post-punk to Afrobeat to hip hop to whatever. We're almost as much music fans as we are a band that makes music."

Another good portion of the album came from sessions with frequent collaborator Mark Ramos-Nishita, aka Money Mark, and Beasties "regular percussion player" Alfredo Ortiz. Both musicians "embellished on top of what we had already made and arranged," said Mike D.

The Beastie Boys will have a chance to air out material from the new album at a series of instrumental shows scattered throughout their beefy schedule of festival dates, where they'll stick to their hits.

Mike joked that they plan to use some of their festival dates to expand their fanbase. "We're trying to really cross over into the whole jam band, Bonnaroo, Government-- what's it?-- Gov't Mule? That whole genre. We can play up the jam band [aspect], have a hacky sack tent. The 'Hack Sack Hand'... 'Sack Hand State Fair', we're going to be performing at. We're going to be performing at a lot of state fairs and a lot of pie-eating contests, too."

When asked if The Mix-Up might provide a pastry-oriented twist on the old Spacemen 3 axiom Taking Drugs to Make Music to Take Drugs To, he said, "Yeah, it would be a great record to eat pie to."

The pie-eating days of summer begin for the Beastie Boys' on May 26 at the Sasquatch! Festival.

The Mix-Up tracklist:

01 B for My Name
02 14th St. Break
03 Suco de Tangerina
04 The Gala Event
05 Electric Worm
06 Freaky Hijiki
07 Off the Grid
08 The Rat Cage
09 The Melee
10 Dramastically Different
11 The Cousin of Death
12 The Kangaroo Rat

Dates:

05-26 George, WA - Gorge Amphitheatre (Sasquatch! Festival) (instrumental show)
05-27 George, WA - Gorge Amphitheatre (Sasquatch! Festival)
06-10 Lisbon, Portugal - Alive Festival
06-11 Lisbon, Portugal - Aula Magna (instrumental show)
06-14 Barcelona, Spain - Sonar Festival (instrumental show)
06-15 Barcelona, Spain - Sonar Festival
06-17 Istanbul, Turkey - Efes Pilsen One Love Festival
06-20 Berlin, Germany - Columbiahalle (instrumental show)
06-22 Scheesel, Germany - Hurricane Festival
06-23 Cologne, Germany - E-Werk (instrumental show)
06-24 Neuhausen, Germany - Southside Festival
06-26 Paris, France - Zenith
06-27 Paris, France - Bataclan (instrumental show)
06-28 Werchter, Belgium - Rock Werchter Festival
06-30 Gdynia, Poland - Heineken Festival
07-01 Gdynia, Poland - Heineken Festival (instrumental show)
07-03 Kristiansand, Norway - Quart Festival
07-04 Stockholm, Sweden - Grona Lund Tivoli
07-06 Roskilde, Denmark - Roskilde Festival
07-07 London, England - Wembley Stadium (Live Earth)
07-11 Locarno, Switzerland - Moon & Stars Festival
07-13 Novl Sad, Serbia - Exit Festival
07-14 Vienna, Austria - Nuke Festival
08-04 Baltimore, MD - Pimlico Race Course (Virgin Festival)
08-31 Argyll, Scotland - Inveraray Castle (Connect Festival)
09-01 Stradbally, Ireland - Electric Picnic Festival
09-08 Isle of Wight, England - Bestival
09-09 Isle of Wight, England - Bestival (instrumental show)