diff --git a/debian/changelog b/debian/changelog
index 71c5005..6458325 100644
--- a/debian/changelog
+++ b/debian/changelog
@@ -2,6 +2,7 @@
 
   * Switch to debhelper level 9
   * Standards-Version updated to 3.9.5 (no changes)
+  * Use XZ compression for the upstream tarball
 
  -- Emmanuel Bourg <ebourg@apache.org>  Fri, 14 Feb 2014 00:06:41 +0100
 
diff --git a/debian/orig-tar.sh b/debian/orig-tar.sh
index 18190af..4b36225 100755
--- a/debian/orig-tar.sh
+++ b/debian/orig-tar.sh
@@ -3,12 +3,13 @@
 # $2 = version
 # $3 = file
 DIR=libslf4j-java-$2.orig
-TAR=$3
+TAR=../libslf4j-java_$2.orig.tar.xz
 
 # clean up the upstream tarball
-tar xzf $TAR
+tar xzf $3
+rm $3
 mv slf4j-$2 $DIR
-GZIP=--best tar czf $TAR -X debian/orig-tar.exclude $DIR
+XZ_OPT=--best tar cJf $TAR -X debian/orig-tar.exclude $DIR
 rm -rf $DIR
 
 # move to directory 'tarballs'