![]() ![]() I used to, and still think that the sound is a bit too dramatic for my liking, but I can dig it. While the thundering horns he did on "Blood On The Leaves" remain a one-off, you do hear aspects of his work on, say, Rico Nasty's "iPhone". But yeah, he was ahead of his time, as they say. The Guardian recently wrote a review for Rico Nasty's new album, Nightmare Vacation, and in it, they tried their hand at defining hyperpop: "this year’s buzzy, catch-all term for candied pixelations of J-pop, EDM, hip-hop, rock and chipmunk vocals that is aesthetically rooted in the 00s, and is either the coolest thing to happen on TikTok or is like what Hudson Mohawke was making 10 years ago." I thought the HudMo nod was nice, and even though I'd been listening to him since his work with Lunice back in 2012 (as TNGHT), I admittedly never caught the parallels with his solo work and today's renewed interests in Bladee, chipmunk soul, and uhhh. Anyways, cynicism aside, I love this single, I love Madlib, I love Four Tet, and I'm super excited for the album, Sound Ancestors. Part of me cringes at the thought of someone discovering Madlib through one of those dystopian "chill lo-fi beats to study to" playlists, but if it gets him paid, then I'm for it. To be clear, I welcome the change, and for better or for worse, it'll help amplify Madlib's music to a wider audience once this inevitably gets fed into all of the streaming algorithms, etc. ![]() Not that I prefer the "correct-ness" of the sound here – I know a lot of people have fetishized the off-kilter, lo-fi feel of Madlib's (and to an even greater extent, Dilla's) drum patterns, and as a fan I love them all the same – but I do think the added "polish" here is definitely Four Tet's doing. The drum break (from Lou Donaldson's "Ode to Billie Joe") is also just so satisfyingly sharp, which is actually kinda uncharacteristic for a Madlib beat. There's a bit more of that here on "Road of the Lonely Ones", where he flips The Ethics's gorgeous "Lost in a Lonely World" for the main vocal theme, but also "Now Is The Time" for the little intro theme. He also has a great sense of spacing sample-driven music has natural limitations, but Madlib times the entrance and exit of each sound perfectly, often "breaking" his loops for a fraction of a second to add variety and avoid congestion in the arrangement. Madlib just has a way of squeezing every ounce of emotion out of his samples, often zooming into a single microscopic segment and looping it until you discover new details on the 1,000th iteration. Although the album will be billed as Madlib's, it's really a mindmeld between two of my all-time favorites. Earlier this year, I interviewed Egon and he talked a bit about his friendship with Kieran Hebden (aka Four Tet), but still, I wasn't prepared to see the news that 1) Madlib is dropping a new solo album, at a time where his mainstream relevance seems to be heightened by his work with Freddie Gibbs, and that 2) Kieran is assisting with arranging, editing, and sequencing. ![]()
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