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Speaking to Zane Lowe, Mike Dean revealed just how crucial those public events were, while admitting each follow-up studio session was undeniably exhausting.

Mike Dean has a long history with Kanye West from working on 2007s Graduation to 2010s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy and, more recently, Donda. The veteran producer worked overtime to bring the final product to completion following three elaborate listening parties two at the Mercedes-Benz stadium in Atlantaand one at Soldier Field in Kanyes hometown of Chicago. While speaking to Apple Musics Zane Lowe about his latest solo album ECHOPLEX (Live 2021), Dean revealed just how crucial those public events were, while admitting each follow-up studio session was undeniably exhausting. It was interesting, he said of the album process. It was grueling, lots of hours, lots of changes. Came out great though. For this album, it was I mean, Kanye had three listening parties. So each listening party was like a test kind of. And after each one, I think he wanted I cant talk too much about his process. He took all the information he got from everyone, including online reviews, personal friends reviews, and he just kind of digest it all and adjust the album the way he wants. I definitely looked at how the crowd moved to different songs because I was up in the top of the stadium, deejaying the whole thing. I was up in a little circle. No, I was just up on a house, maybe four layers up, next to the top layer, running the songs off my computer. Elsewhere in the interview, Mike Deantalked about the origins of the ECHOPLEX (Live 2021) album, which came about after a night of taking hallucinogens at the Echoplex in Los Angeles. I decided I was going to do the show about two months ago, I think, he explained. My agent, Karen Lewis, hit me up. She was like, Do you want to play a show? Somebody, they wanted me to DJ. And I said, Yeah, but I want to play synths. I want to get up on stage and show my ass and improvise and just And it was. It was an hour-and-a-half show. Id say it was an hour of improvisations. I started with big bass notes to scare the shit out of everyone in the venue. Read more