At some point in the last year or so that she was alive, I started recording her with my iPhone, I think I had a sense she wasn’t going to be around too much longer.

You really become attached to these little creatures and Raspy was my cat, my buddy.

We still have Donut, but we had to put Raspy down in the fall of 2018 and that was really tough. We had to put Stinko down and that was really hard and then about the same time, we had our third stray cat Donut show up, so very, very briefly we had three cats. We were buddies and I have to admit I pretty much like cats now. For some weird reason, even though Maria fed her, she seemed to like me best. Maria named her Raspy because she had a raspy voice like the Tom Waits or Keith Richards of cats. So we kept Stinko and by being exposed to him, my allergies gradually went away after a year or two and I grew to really like him. But on the morning he was to be adopted by his new owners, I felt like I was being selfish and I should try and live with the cat because Maria clearly loved him. I named him Stinko and because I was highly allergic to cats, Maria agreed to find a more permanent home for him. But back in 2002 my wife Maria adopted a stray cat while I was in LA at the Sonic Youth curated All Tomorrow’s Parties festival. I never really liked cats, I’ve always been more of a dog person. When I put it on my wife immediately said 'This is arty as hell.' Music for People Who Like Cats is a nice tribute to Raspy and all proceeds benefit the ASPCA. It'll flow seamlessly with my Tangerine Dream, Eno, Tycho and Pink Floyd mix and I'd love to hear a remix of 'Raspy 4' with Robert Plant's vocal from 'In the Light' superimposed. As a stand-alone release, it's just a flat out good album to chill to, but knowing that the sound sources are primarily cat generated, makes it an even more fun and interesting listen. I didn't think about it again until recently when John sent a note along with a link to the album. That is not to say that Raspy actually sat down and made the sounds, but that all the rhythmic and some of the melodic sounds are actually the cat.

A few months back while on a call with Tape Op publisher John Baccigaluppi, he mentioned that he was working on an album project where the majority of the sounds were generated by his cat Raspy.

Arturia ems