Madlib Sound Ancestors (Arranged By Kieran Hebden) LP

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LP version. Music by Madlib arranged by Kieren Hebden. Gil Evans to Miles Davis... Holger Czukay to the ensemble known as Can... Jean Claude Vannier to Serge Gainsbourg on Histoire de Melody Nelson. That's the only way to explain the specificity of Four Tet and Madlib's collaboration, in this special album that showcases a two-decade long friendship that has resulted in an album that follows Madlib's classics like Quasimoto's The Unseen, Madvillainy and his Pinata and Bandana albums with Freddie Gibbs.

"A few months ago I completed work on an album with my friend Madlib that we'd been making for the last few years. He is always making loads of music in all sorts of styles and I was listening to some of his new beats and studio sessions when I had the idea that it would be great to hear some of these ideas made into a Madlib solo album. Not made into beats for vocalists to use but instead arranged into tracks that could all flow together in an album designed to be listened to start to finish.

I put this concept to him when we were hanging out eating some nice food one day and we decided to work on this together with him sending me tracks, loops, ideas and experiments that I would arrange, edit, manipulate and combine. I was sent hundreds of pieces of music over a couple of years stretch and during that time I put together this album with all the parts that fitted with my vision." - Kieren Hebden AKA Four Tet

...[W]hile Madlib earns obvious comparisons to freewheeling jazz experimentalists, Sound Ancestors makes a strong case for considering him alongside musicians like Brian Eno, known for powerful sonic landscapes that are as experiential as they are musical. In fact, Madlib's appeal has long extended beyond the reaches of hip-hop's diaspora. Thom Yorke famously plotted on a project with the elusive producer and you don't have to look far in any genre to find Madlib acolytes. Throughout the record, we're reminded why. On the album's eponymous track there are racing percussions that harken the types of rare tribal recordings you can imagine Four Tet and Madlib geeking out over. Halfway through, we're suddenly thrown into an impromptu jazz session that might make you wonder if there was a jazz quartet in the room with the tribal elders, or maybe vice versa.

On his collaborative album with Four Tet's Kieran Hebden, the producer, multi-instrumentalist, DJ, and archivist remains masterful by simply turning what he hears into something new and revelatory.

Instead of focusing on a certain genre, location, or era, Sound Ancestors reflects the producer's wide-ranging influences, just as comfortably pulling from post-punk and psych-rock as from fusion and Brazilian jazz....it sounds recognizably like both Madlib and Four Tet while taking their music into directions where neither artist has ventured before, and its highlights are life-affirming.