It’s been right in plain view during 2010: no musicians can do what Madlib is currently doing. The Californian beat-collagist is everywhere. His output this year has included all production on two boom-bap releases by Strong Arm Steady and Guilty Simpson, a fusion-jazz album, and, come July, six instalments of his crate-digging Medicine Show series set to comprise a dozen by December. Genres are bypassed as irrelevant in his creative haze, and whatever Otis ‘Madlib’ Jackson is toking is laced with inspiration concentrate. The man is everywhere, at once.

Throughout the Medicine Show series, Madlib has brought us psychadelic and progressive rock from progressive African rock to Brazilian, with occasional detours into the piles of beat tapes the man created in the 1990’s. Halfway through the year and the series, we arrive at The Brain Wreck Show, a journey into the lefgacy of prog- and psych-rock in the US, all perceived through the Madlibber’s abnormal flair for digging through dusty record crates.

Once inside the realm of independent music’s Gyro Gearloose, it becomes clear that there are two sides to the schizophrenia: that of the music being played and that of the mind mixing it. While encountering fragments of psychadelic free jazz, Eazy-E is telling us to “shut the fuck up,” and at some point Daffy Duck lectures us on substance abuse. Throughout, Madlib is testing our conception of sound; frantic, irregular hi-hats and frequency distortions are as integral to the music as knocking drums and drug-fused guitar solos from way back when.

By ‘Track 5‘ (unnamed, of course) we’ve arrived at something resembling a coherent song (not to worry – the levels are all over the place). If Madlib’s mission is to make a mockery of the act of listening in an ever-shuffling musical world, he has got his point accross. Like much of his music, the sixth instalment of the Medicine Show series explores the contrasts between fragments of American popular culture and the tangible experiences of those living adjacent to it. And while he’s at it, we’d better leave him be.

“Will you ever stop digging?
Shut the fuck up!”

words Sven Carlsson

——————

Pre-order the collector’s edition of The Brain Wreck Show at Stones Throw.
Madlib’s MySpace