MADLIB - "Sound Ancestors" LP

Madlib - Sound Ancestors (Arranged By Kieran Hebden) LP (Madlib Invazion, 2021) "Across his catalog, Madlib has maintained a tricksterish relationship to authorship, relishing his ability to leave you wondering who exactly is doing what, and when. On a series of jazz-oriented releases that feature Otis Jackson Jr. playing many or all of the live instruments himself, he has adopted a series of fanciful aliases: Yesterday’s New Quintet, Sound Directions, Ahmad Miller, The Last Electro-Acoustic Space Jazz & Percussion Ensemble. Whatever other roles these characters serve in his process, they also upend received hierarchies of value in musical creativity. He’s happy to take credit for an album that a traditionalist might write off as plagiarism of other people’s work—but when he’s playing bass, drums, percussion, kalimba, synth, organ, electric piano? That wasn’t Madlib, that was Monk Hughes & the Outer Realm. Sound Ancestors is elusive in subtler ways. “Duumbiyay,” its gorgeous fi