James Murphy on the DFAtalkboards:

"i have to defend something bizzare: i don't think it's entirely irrelevant, the idea of selling out--i'm just often pretty dubious about people's definitions, etc., and i take exception to being called out about something that i'm this pleased with by people who haven't heard the fucking music.

i mean, i this is one my favorite things i've ever made--i'm as proud of this as of anything else--and it's either going to be pretty invisible and nike and apple are not going to do much with it, in which case i get it back anyway and i'm happy, OR they're going to somehow push it into the "mainstream", whatever that means now, which is pretty hilarious. i mean, as juan said, it's a 45 minute disco track about space featuring singing spaceships and singing stars, etc., and if it were somehow "successful", i think that would make me smile over my coffee in the morning.

as it is, in reality it's not going to make nike sell any more shoes than they already sell, or apple sell any more ipods than they already sell--that's just the truth. i think they know that. it's why i could negotiate for total creative control (they didn't even have the right to respond about the track, contractually--it was simply "if you like it, you use it under these terms, and if you don't like it, we use it however we like")--because it didn't "reflect" on them the way an advertisement would. honestly, they just wanted something that could "go with" those funny shoes they made, but--being a global super-brand--couldn't resist putting a logo on the cover of the thing, which i intentionally let them do with their comedy colors so it was obvious, aesthetically, that there was me and there was them.

to be honest, i was partly hoping that they would reject it so i could use some of the songs on 12"s right now, but, in the end, i think it's better the way it is--i mean, this would be a very hard thing to turn into dfa and EMI--"oh here--put this out," i mean--i'm about to release a new album, and i'd drop this on them?

anyway, i think it's a strange thing to be asked to do, and my manager totally thought i was going to tell him to shove it up his ass when he mentioned it to me--i mean, he was like "ok, this thing came in, and i'm pretty sure i know what you're going to say", and i totally blew it off--but i'd been thinking a lot about E2-E4 by gottesching and had realized that i'd never get to make something like that really--i mean, i could MAKE it, but that's different than making it to have it be released as something other than a novelty--and so, after reading the brief and realizing that it wasn't an advertisement per se, realizing that i'd get it back and would have control over it, i decided to go for it.

i certainly wasn't trying to make people work out, or buy shoes, or ipods or whatever. i wasn't trying to further the nike brand, or extend its already seemingly limitless cultural clutches into whatever consists of "my world" or anything like that. i just wanted to make a sprawling disco thing that bummed jocks out by being way too gay, and made me happy, distracting me from the brain-melting pressure of making a second album (ask juan about that) and went out into the world with no promo work from me or dfa (no interviews, press photos, etc.) all i had to do was write that ridiculous liner note package, which no one seems to get to tone of anyway. i mean, it's all corporate doubletalk, for fuck's sake, (though i do actually do the jiu jitsu, which totally rules and i couldn't reccomend more).

anyway, i've said too much, so i'm going back into the studio to work on the record, even though it's sunday, and so amazingly lovely out, sunny and cold--the best kind of new york day--and the studio is in a windowless basement with the worst ventilation known to man, mold in the airducts etc., where eric broucek and i can simply pass one mutation of the flu back and forth between us over and over for the next few months until one of us goes on tour or dies--whichever comes first.

and, to be totally honest, it's an honor."