Yes, That’s a Real Horse on FaltyDL’s Last Album Cover
Drew Lustman was born and raised in New York City, but the uninitiated might not know it from listening to the jazz-inflected meditations on UK bass he’s been releasing for nearly a decade as FaltyDL. Earlier this year he released a skittering yet soulful new LP, Heaven Is for Quitters, on his own Blueberry Recordings imprint. Featuring Planet Mu’s Mike Paradinas – the first to pick up on Lustman’s early jungle and drum & bass productions – and British R&B singer Rosie Lowe on a woozy ballad, the album serves up more of Falty’s lush electronic experiments.
In this excerpt from an interview with Harley Brown for RBMA Radio’s New York City spotlight, The Slice, Lustman discusses sampling a Vietnam soldier’s soliloquy and tells us how to rent a horse in Manhattan.
FaltyDL
I was finishing up In the Wild, my last FaltyDL album and I had all this new stuff that was sort of like jungle and hardcore influenced, a lot of breaks, and I was trying to find a home for it and they all sort of congealed together to become this album, The Crystal Cowboy. On “Watch a Man Die,” I used this sample of this Vietnam soldier talking about his experience in the war. I actually have an edit of it where he just keeps repeating that throughout the whole song. I played it in a few clubs and I was like, “This is maybe too dark.”
I really wanted to make a solid jungle tune. I don’t really have any solid jungle tunes in my back catalog so I was like, “Maybe I’ll just start this album off with my best shot at doing that, what I think jungle should sound like now.
The cover to the album was shot at a time when, unfortunately, there were those cops that were shot in New York City, so the mayor and the police chief were like, “Alright. Police, you’re only going to work at 3% capacity,” and so there were no cops on the streets for a month. They were on the streets, but they were just instructed not to hassle anyone.
The shot that we did was very illegal. We just had this horse pull up at 7 AM and I have a few photos of cops just walking around just laughing at it, but they weren’t going to do anything. I think you need a permit to block traffic like we did, especially with an animal.
I leased the horse for an hour. I called the stable, the Kensington Stables which are near Prospect Park in Brooklyn and they were like, “When do you need the horse for?” I was like, “Tomorrow morning.” He’s like, “What time?” I’m like, “I don’t know. When’s good for you?” He’s like, “You just tell me a time.” Like, “7 AM.” He’s like, “Great. How many people are going to be on the horse?” I was like, “Just me.” He’s like, “It’s $150.” I was like, “Great.” Gave him my credit card information, the horse showed up the next morning. It was great. Anything you need to do in New York, it’s just $150 away.
