The Beastie Boys' Adam Yauch recently spoke with Pitchfork about their upcoming album as well as his production work on the long-awaited new album from the legendary Bad Brains.

As for the new Beasties album, many will be happy to hear that: "[We're' focusing on playing instruments [and] not really working with drum machines and samples." Two of the bands most beloved records - 1992's Check Your Head and 1994's Ill Communication - saw the band working primarily with live instrumentation and the result was some of their most diverse material. The trio's past two albums, have been more electronic, taking most of their influence from old school hip hop rather than the punk and jazz elements of those early 90s-era albums.

Yauch also described what fans can expect from the new Bad Brains album. He began working with the band as early as 2004 and noted:

[The new album] "Build a Nation" is more raw sounding than some of the other stuff that they did. It has a pretty full sound, but it's more like the way they sounded live back in the day seeing them at CBGB's, the amps and the PA at full tilt.

With I Against I and after that, they started bringing the reggae influence into the rock style, and this record goes back to the [self-titled] ROIR cassette style where the dub is very separate from the hardcore tracks. There are tracks that are more straight-up hardcore and then tracks that are straight-up dub.

The Beastie Boys are set to return with new material in the spring, as are the Bad Brains.