Primus

For the past 27 years, Primus have followed in the footsteps of boundary-pushing artists like Frank Zappa and Pink Floyd to create some of the most original and inventive music in existence. Its latest album, Green Naugahyde, was produced and engineered by Les Claypool in his personal studio, Rancho Relaxo, in Northern California, and features Claypool, long-time guitarist Larry LaLonde and drummer Jay Lane. Jay was in an early lineup of the band, and was also in Sausage, a 1994 reunion of the 1988 Primus lineup. Green Naugahyde expands on Primus' incomparable sound and also sees them bringing it into the next millennium. It is a cerebral and complex album that, like all of the band's output, is teeming with the band's signature blend of whimsy and underlying darkness.

Says Claypool, "If I were to look at all of our records, it seems like this is reminiscent of the early stuff. Obviously, with Jay there's a newness to it, but because he left the band right before we recorded our first record, his approach has an eerie harkening to the old Frizzle Fry days.... There wasn't a lot of pre-thought to this as much as, 'Oh here we are, we should make a record.'"

"I've been playing with Jay quite a lot over the past 10 years and we have an intuitive bond, so for me he was a natural choice to be back in the mix," Claypool continues when asked how Jay came about rejoining the band after nearly two decades apart.

Claypool and LaLonde concur that Jay injected the band with a new energy that's evident in every note of Green Naugahyde. "We recorded this album in the same way we always do but having Jay there made this a whole different experience," explains LaLonde. "It definitely made it more collaborative and it made us excited about the album as we went along because we had so much fun in the process."