Mochipet, the always innovative San Francisco electronic music artist and head of prolific Bay Area indie label Daly City Records, came up with a novel idea for getting the cover art for his next single "Whompa-Saurus-Sex." He is holding a Have Mochipet Make you Dinner! contest in which whomever makes the artwork chosen for the new single (listen to it here) can either have the artist come over and cook them dinner or lunch, or have Mochipet go to their house and DJ their party, or else have the artist send them a purple custom made dino suit (his trademark outfit to perform in) so that they can make their own Mochi themed Dino Party!

Earlier this week I caught up with Mochipet, who was interviewed on the Amoeblog a few years ago, to ask him about this contest, which he just launched in conjunction with the small netlabel Peppermill.  "I've always wanted to do a cover contest but never really knew how until I came up with this concept," he told me. "I wanted to do something different. I wanted to do something fun. And I wanted to do something personal. And what's more personal than cooking for someone? Right? I honestly love to cook but never get a chance to so this is a good chance for me to get out the utensils and go to town!"

"If the winner chooses to have me DJ their house party I will not take requests. If what they want are requests then I will happily hand them an iPod and tell em to go to town. They don't need me for that," he said with a laugh. Note that the DJing and dinner making part of the contest are only available if Mochipet comes to the winner's town on tour or is based in the Bay Area. Listen to the song that the cover art will be for here. For complete contest details click here and then you can click here to get officially registered via Peppermill.

AMOEBLOG: I've heard many descriptions of your music, but how do you describe the music you make?

MOCHIPET: I like to think of my music as "experimental music," but more in a sense that I am always experimenting with new sounds and ideas. Not necessarily sounds that are new to the human ear, but sounds that are always new to mine. I used to try and always make sounds that no one has ever heard before but then I realized it doesn't matter if anyone else has heard it. It only matters if I had. Other people like to call my music. IDM, Glitch, Breakcore, etc etc..  But I just make music.

AMOEBLOG: According to the liner notes, your new album, Microphonepet , was recorded over a five year span but you don't give years for each track. In which years were most of the tracks recorded?

MOCHIPET: Yes, the songs were all spaced out and recorded over the past five years. I have always enjoyed making hip hop beats and collaborating with MC's. However, I never had enough for a full album, because it was not the only thing I did. But recently I had a chance to finish up these songs and compile them into a LP. The newest ones were "Girls and Boys and Toys" with Jahcoozi, "Banna Split" with Bicasso of Living Legends and E Da Boss, "Mr. Malase" (featuring Casual of Hieroglyphics, Dopestyle, and Humanbeings), and "Take You Down" (featuring Sindri andTaiwankid). The oldest one is probably "The Graduate" (featuring Dubphonics). The older ones were generally more sample based while the newer ones were more glitch and synth based.