MADLIB

The seventh installment in his Madlib Medicine Show, a jazz album with his Yesterdays New Quintet called High Jazz. Madlib’s been busy this year. And while his recorded output always spans the gamut, he often returns to recurrent themes, spread across the genres that serve as home base – or bases, as it were. Jazz is one such base. With High Jazz, Madlib begins anew – offering familiar jazz sounds from a series of “new” groups from his ever-augmenting cosmos. Call it “Yesterdays Galaxy.” High Jazz, the name itself a tribute to the landmark jazz-fusion album released by Stanton Davis’s Ghetto Mysticism in 1976, shows a marked development in Madlib’s craft. Every element of jazz is there. Is that tune modal-funk? Was that song psych-fusion? Was that a bossa-tinged run or another kind of latin-affair? Where did that sitar come from? Madlib’s Yesterdays-excursions are never easy to categorize and that’s the point – while experiencing chops like these, the desire to rigidly define takes a back seat to aural pleasure.

A1 Jackson Conti– Steppin' Into Tomorrow (Prelude)
A2 Generation Match– Electronic Dimensions
A3 Jahari Massamba Unit– Pretty Eyes
A4 The Kenny Cook Octet– High Jazz
B1 Yesterdays New Quintet– Medley: Don't You Worry Bout A Thing ( Live At Spear For Moondog)
C1 Madlib– Interlude
C2 The Big Black Foot Band– Reality Or Dream
Featuring – The Black Spirits (2)
C3 Russell Jenkins Jazz Express– Drunk Again
C4 Poyser*, Riggins* & Jackson*– Funky Butt, Part 1
C5 Jahari Massamba Unit– Wonderin'/Nightime
D1 R.M.C.– Space & Time
D2 Yesterdays New Quintet– Conquistador
D3 The Big Black Foot Band– Tarzan's Theme
Featuring – The Black Spirits (2)
D4 Madlib– Interlude
D5 Joe McDuphrey Experience– Kimo