In the wake of CRACK III’s release, Sela shared the intense process behind compiling the series over the past couple years, and his evolving understanding of the genre over the course of the compilations. You can download CRACK I here, CRACK II here, and stream/download CRACK III here.

Pitchfork: How’d you originally get into footwork?

SELA: I had heard the genre very vaguely prior to this, but I'd say I started really getting into footwork mid-2011. I remember I randomly stumbled upon "Pop the Trunk" by DJ Diamond on Youtube super late one night and all I could think was, "What the fuck is this music?" I started to look through Youtube a bit more, and listen to the Planet Mu footwork releases and comps. And this is when I started to see the divide between "real" footwork and newer, more trap-influenced stuff. This realization was sort of the precursor to my decision to make the first CRACK compilation.

Pitchfork: What was the inspiration behind the o.g., CRACK Vol. I?

SELA: Despite only being into footwork for two years at the time I started putting the comp together, I had pretty strong feelings about the way the genre was being emulated by anyone who took enough notice to try and put their spin on it. Some of this fault falls on the listeners and readers as well, as it seemed like a lot of people who heard this kind of music [in passing] weren't able to get past the silliness or rawness of some of the samples used, or more so the way the samples were used. In the time prior to release, I had already dug really deep into various websites and forums, trying to find more of the first and second generations of this music. A lot of things about the music started to click for me. The vocal samples. The repetition. The timing in relation to the dancing. The general technicality and again, rawness of it, for lack of a better term. It just blew my mind how this music was a decade or more ahead of its time from a production standpoint, and it made me want to share something that would hopefully—possibly—lead others to this same realization.

Pitchfork: Most of the tracks in the CRACK comps are super obscure, and very few seem to exist elsewhere on the Internet. What’s the process for finding this stuff?

SELA: It was pretty tedious. I knew that most of this music was uploaded on Myspace, but a lot of it was uploaded on Imeem as well. Myspace bought Imeem, which obviously means Myspace took control of their servers and the data on them. Weirdly enough, all these years later, it turns out that Myspace did not delete much of anything from these servers. And even more weirdly, with the “New Myspace” revamp that was done a year or two ago, whatever updated search engine they used allows users to browse a bunch of uploads that were not previously visible or accessible, a lot of these being Imeem tracks. I used this to my advantage and came up with maybe 100+ search terms to input. When I found something relevant, I kept the URLs, then looked through the profile's friends list for anything that looked fitting or interesting.

Doing this for a while got me to a point where I isolated a bunch of recurring profiles that were basically all the people who participated in the scene when it was happening—think Facebook's mutual friends feature. There's a bit more to it, but basically, after finding all the songs I wanted, I still had to record them in real time, as Myspace, like most streaming sites, is scripted in a way that doesn't present the media being streamed as accessible—you can't rip what's playing like you can from Youtube. Since the bitrates vary so much, I recorded in .WAV format so I could just transcode at whatever VBR, but .WAV’s can't be tagged. So upon converting to MP3, I had to tag each song again one by one. It was still fun to do though, overall.

Pitchfork: Has your sense of style or purpose, or your understanding of footwork as a whole, shifted over the course of the three volumes?

SELA: I think the first one was solely about showcasing the older, less-heard music, with specific attention to listenability for people who are new to the genre. CRACK III is the most well-rounded of the three. CRACK II is still consistent, but I released it so soon after the first one that I personally feel like there's a little less intent behind it. I still really like most of the tracks on there, though. III has the same intent as the first compilation, and definitely goes back to putting the main focus on "lost" tracks. But I disregarded listenability for newcomers on this iteration, aside from putting some real thought into the ordering of the tracks. It definitely has changed my understanding of the genre, the culture, and probably of electronic music in general. The fact that this kind of music exists lets me know that we still have a lot of ground to cover in terms of electronic music. The capabilities are endless.