Master Mix embodies the genre-defying, experimental spirit that defined Russell’s work. Living in the East Village from the ‘70s until his untimely death in 1992 at age 40 from AIDS-related causes, Russell moved effortlessly between the city’s various music scenes, recording disco beats alongside Nicky Siano one night, and the next, crafting slow, haunting tracks in his apartment with his cello and idiosyncratic warbling voice. The New Yorker called his work “stranded between lands real and imagined: the street and the cornfield; the soft bohemian New York and the hard Studio 54 New York; the cheery bold strokes of pop and the liberating possibilities of abstract art.” Through his collaborations, he earned the admiration of artists like Allen Ginsberg, David Byrne and Philip Glass, who said of Russell’s music: “It does not submit to formula, but subverts the formula.”
The record features 26 tracks by more than 20 artists, including Hot Chip, Sufjan Stevens, Phosphorescent, Blood Orange, The Autumn Defense and Lonnie Holley, paying homage to Russell’s boundless creativity and wide-ranging work, which swerved from electronic dance to folk to classical and resulted in what NPR hails as “catchy and hypnotic records that were far ahead of their time.”