Odds'n Sods

Deep Concentration

Madlib - "Sir Bang" (mp3)

Madlib - "Black Mozart" (mp3)
(purchase here)

Keeping somewhat with the Jay Dee tribute, we turn to his one-time partner-in-beats'n rhymes, Madlib. No surprise that the prolific Otis has some more beats to sell -- peep how deep his discog rolls.

Not much information on his upcoming March release, Beat Konducta, Vol. 1-2: Movie Scenes, except that it consist of instrumentals from his beat CDs. Fans will likely recognize snippets and ideas in his recent projects, such as Quasimoto, Madvillain and Jaylib. Although the format is incredibly erratic -- most of the pieces average about 90 seconds... and there're 35 cuts -- the disc perhaps best exemplifies his wandering mind. Much like the current method of information digestion, surfing, 'lib wanders through his crates, grafting ideas and snippets here and there into weird little Frankenbeat babies. Some of it sticks, like the clever "Sir Bang" (so, that's how M.O.P. could sound), some of it, well, just sounds like a bunch of records glued together.

While I personally prefer Jay Dee's work, simply because of the lack of apparent esotericism, I find Beat Konducta an appropriate companion piece to Dilla's Donuts. The latter feels equally incomplete, like a detailed sketchpad of ideas, but still reveals a considerable amount about Jay Dee's concepts of rhythm and how to manipulate beats with phased out and filtered sounds. Similarly, Beat Konducta is in many ways Madlib at his most maddening, but in crushing seemingly random records together and skipping beats left and right, one hears a comparable ability to push the idea of 4/4 funk. They are both immensely cerebral and deliberate efforts, though they breeze by quick enough to seem effortless and even callous. Maybe Soul Imperialist would approve of this signifyin'?