I realised that a lot of the process within this final major portfolio work is to question your own practice, for me right now it’s why sampling, and more recently, why the turntable? Why do I like records and sampling through the turntable? What does this represent for me? So I’ll do some research into an artist or two about it.
Christian Marclay was the first one that appeared, it seemed as if he was coined with inventing to use the gramophone and the turntable as an instrument for his works, coming up around the same time as the hip hop movement in the late 1970s.
I read this interview with Christian Marclay he describes his work and other aspects. Firstly this interview is by Vincent Katz, The parts that are interesting are the second page, they discuss where he has been influenced, is Fluxus part of the influence? He says the music isn’t but that there is no such thing as Fluxus music, but Fluxus as an idea, that conventional music, the presentation of music, people on a stage and everyone else watching. I want to look into Fluxus. Further on the third page here, it describes that there is a similarity between hip and rap music, at least on the surface with his practice. He says that “I think the desire to quote and make reference to the past is a very contemporary attitude. I don’t know why people feel like that. Everybody grew up listening to all this stuff, and all this music is, in a way, already sampled in our heads, it’s there. It’s a way that the musician triggers those memory bits that play with memory.
How can this be a memory for someone like me, who is sampling things I’ve never heard before? Quoting the past? Situating ones self into the piece of work? Fluxus?
I watched this video where he discusses what he is interested in, sounds like people we don’t want. We don’t want to hear the pops the clicks and the surface noise when listening to a record. Christian Marclay, he is interested in this practice and those are the sounds he wants to use. The sounds he can get out of the record are what he is interested in, and what can he get from it, he would cut the records into three pieces and then combine them into one. He described the punk rock as a huge influence on him, it allowed him to play music without studying music, and without having an instrument he began using his turntable as an instrument. He was doing this before hip-hop.
Christian Marclay Records
This project was made by Christian throughout the 1980s, he ended up creating an album built up of hundreds of hours of random recordings, using different turntables and affecting the vinyl record in different ways. He used the records as instruments and the turntables as the players, he would cut them up, melt them and manipulate them in numerous ways, the outcome was something similar to the Fluxus idea of process over outcome, that creating is the best thing to do. I will say the creative use and looped-up sections interest me heavily. It’s a similar but different thing than what I’ve been composing but the actual work is fascinating.
Specifically, the track 1930 captures my attention wholeheartedly, It’s a transfusion of pieces all held together, the trumpet being affected, the record being scratched, and the in and out keys coming through. Painting the record with an idea of random expression. I really like it.
Also just to note, I read he makes graphic scores specifically one called Ephemera, I want to check out graphic scores for myself as I want to paint one.
As I couldn’t find his bio, I did see his Wikipedia and his website is not his website but his label website? Again not sure if the Wikipedia information is accurate. I then located his bio on his Spotify which is written by Mark Demming a music journalist.
Describing himself as “a DJ first, producer second, and MC last,” Madlib is the primary alias of Otis Jackson, Jr., who has become one of the most celebrated, prolific, and eclectic artists in hip-hop since emerging on the scene in the early ’90s. Also known as Quasimoto, Beat Konducta, and Yesterdays New Quintet, among his dozens of handles, the unique sound and feel of Madlib’s work — created primarily without computers using old-school recording and sampling gear — has made him a valued collaborator with a number of leading hip-hop performers, and a widely praised figure in the underground rap community. There are many highly regarded albums in the vast Madlib discography. These include the Lootpack’s Soundpieces: Da Antidote! (1999), Quasimoto’s The Unseen (2000), Jaylib’s Champion Sound (2003), and Madvillain’s Madvillainy (2004), as well as Piñata (2014) and Bandana (2019), his two LPs with Freddie Gibbs. Some of his additional collaborations include the Jahari Massamba Unit (his duo with Karriem Riggins), who released Pardon My French in 2020, and his full-length with Four Tet, 2021’s Sound Ancestors.
Otis Jackson, Jr. was born in Oxnard, California on October 24, 1973. His father, Otis Jackson, Sr., was a working jazz and blues musician, while his mother, Sinesca, was a guitarist and songwriter, and his uncle was noted jazz trumpeter Jon Faddis. Young Otis first became interested in the workings of a recording studio while watching his father at work, and soaked up a wealth of musical influences while growing up, developing a keen interest in hip-hop along the way.
In 1990, Jackson adopted the stage name Madlib when he joined the trio Lootpack with his friends DJ Romes and Wildchild. When rapper King Tee heard the group, Lootpack were invited to make their recording debut as guests on the album 21 & Over by Tee’s crew Tha Alkaholiks; Madlib was also credited as a producer on one track. Lootpack had a hard time scoring a record deal, and it wasn’t until 1995 that they released their first record on their own — the Psyche Move EP — on Crate Digga’s Palace, a label bankrolled by Madlib’s father. In time, Lootpack would cross paths with DJ and producer Peanut Butter Wolf, who signed the trio to his Stones Throw Records label. It was the beginning of a long relationship between Madlib and Stones Throw, which would release much of his future body of work.
By the time Lootpack released their first album, 1999’s Soundpieces: Da Antidote!, Madlib was already moving on to other projects; he had produced records for Declaime and O.G.C., remixed material for Peanut Butter Wolf’s Definition of Ill 12″, and debuted his Quasimoto persona, in which he delivered weed-laced verses in an artificially high, distorted voice over spacious beats and cool, often jazz-influenced breaks. After a handful of singles, the first Quasimoto album, The Unseen, appeared in 2000; the record received critical praise upon its release and gained a following as an underground rap cult classic.
In 2001, Madlib unveiled another project, a jazz ensemble called Yesterdays New Quintet, with the EP Elle’s Theme. While the YNQ material was credited to a quintet of musicians, with Madlib joined by Monk Hughes, Joe McDuphrey, Malik Flavors, and Ahmad Miller, Madlib in fact performed all the music on their releases himself, showing off his skills on keyboards and percussion as well as producing and sampling. (This would not prevent Madlib from letting his fictive bandmates explore their musical personalities on several “solo” singles and EPs.) The YNQ recordings led to a unique project, the 2003 album Shades of Blue, in which Madlib was given free rein to sample and remix material from the archives of Blue Note Records. Shades of Blue was the first full-length album credited to Madlib, though he’d used the headline for a number of singles and EPs.
In 2003, he also reunited with his former Lootpack partner Wildchild to record the album Secondary Protocol, and teamed up with fellow producer J Dilla for the first of a series of collaborative recordings released under the banner Jaylib. In 2004, Madlib launched yet another collaboration as he and MC MF Doom got together to record under the name Madvillain; the album, Madvillainy, was an enormous critical success, and remains a career highlight for both artists. Also in 2004, Madlib released Theme for a Broken Soul, a surprising venture into broken beat/house music under the name DJ Rels. He also issued a second Quasimoto album, The Further Adventures of Lord Quas, in 2005. Despite this busy schedule, Madlib was also booking more work as a producer, handling sessions with De La Soul, Dudley Perkins, A.G., and Prince Po. He’d go on to produce material for Mos Def, Guilty Simpson, Ghostface Killah, Talib Kweli, Strong Arm Steady, and Erykah Badu, and remixed tracks by Jay-Z, the Beastie Boys, and TV on the Radio.
In 2005, Madlib introduced his latest alter ego, the Beat Konducta, on the LP Vol. 1: Movie Scenes; it was the first release in a series of albums dominated by short, sample-based instrumental pieces, often built around elements from soundtracks and Indian film scores. The first two volumes appeared in 2005 and 2006, followed by Vol. 3 and Vol. 4 of Beat Konducta in India in 2007, and finally the fifth and sixth volumes (dedicated to the late J Dilla) in 2008, released on CD as Vols. 5-6: A Tribute To… in 2009. An unrelated Beat Konducta album, WLIB AM: King of the Wigflip, appeared on BBE Records/Rapster in 2008 as part of their Beat Generation series; the album contained Madlib instrumentals as well as tracks featuring guest MCs including Guilty Simpson, Murs, and Defari.
In 2010, Madlib announced a particularly ambitious project — a series of albums using the blanket title Madlib Medicine Show, which would feature both new mixes and unreleased recordings from Madlib’s archives. Madlib intended to release one Medicine Show album per month for an entire year; the first installment was Medicine Show No. 1: Before the Verdict, and Madlib was not only good to his pledge, releasing Medicine Show No. 12: Raw Medicine in early 2012, but he even tossed in an extra album to round out the project, Medicine Show No. 13: Black Tape. The series also led to the creation of his own label, Madlib Invazion, which was the home to most of his subsequent releases (although he did issue a few other recordings on Stones Throw, such as Yessir Whatever, a 2013 collection of rare/unreleased Quasimoto material, and the soundtrack to the 2014 Stones Throw documentary Our Vinyl Weighs a Ton). Other releases on Madlib Invazion included two volumes of Rock Konducta (instrumentals constructed using prog and Krautrock samples) in 2013, and several singles and EPs with Gary, Indiana-based rapper Freddie Gibbs. The duo’s long-awaited full-length, Piñata, appeared in 2014 to critical acclaim.
Madlib began collaborating with MED and Blu, releasing two EPs (The Burgundy and The Buzz) in 2013, followed by the 2015 full-length Bad Neighbor, all released on MED’s Bang Ya Head label. That same year, Madlib and Future Islands vocalist Samuel T. Herring (who raps under the name Hemlock Ernst) formed a side project called Trouble Knows Me, and released a self-titled EP on Madlib Invazion. In 2016, he produced “No More Parties in L.A.,” the preview single for Kanye West’s album The Life of Pablo. The following year, he issued an album of the Bad Neighbor instrumentals. The Turn Up, an additional EP with MED and Blu, appeared toward the end of 2017. Bandana, the second album by the Madlib-Gibbs duo, was released by major-label RCA in 2019. The Professionals, the self-titled debut by Madlib’s duo with his brother Oh No, appeared in early 2020. Madlib and Karriem Riggins formed the Jahari Massamba Unit, and their full-length debut, Pardon My French, arrived later in the year. Sound Ancestors, a Madlib album edited, arranged, and mastered by Four Tet, was released in 2021. Madlib appeared on 2022 singles by Fatlip (“Gangsta Rap”) and Wildchild (“Manifestin”), and produced Black Star’s comeback album No Fear of Time. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
I’d already heard of and been a fanatic Madlib fan at this point, but I had not done extensive research into his practice on a critical level, After reading this I can tell his eclectic nature is part of his process, constantly working without regard for anyone else, collaboration and other elements are important for him. I’m going to listen to certain albums I have not before in an attempt to further understand the different elements of Madlib.
Jackson Conti
Madlib in this project works with the artist Ivan Conti, one of his favourite artists who is part of the band Azymuth. In this project Madlib plays all the instruments except the drums, performing and playing with Ivan, who is a famous drummer from Brazil. The project is mainly influenced by jazz fusion records from the 70s and 80s.
The record was a balance of Brazilian jazz fusion and hip-hop sensibility, this project also just adds to his repertoire of experimental music.
Madlib Medicine Show
Madlib left Stones Throw and created his own label, called Madlib Invazion. The project Medicine Show was supposed to be one album every month for a year, but this quickly changed and became 13 albums over two years. Each one ranges from experimental compilation tapes to Yesterday’s new quintet jazz albums and old beat tapes from the man himself.
Album 1 was called Before the Verdict and was a collaboration with Guilty Simpson.
The second was Flight to Brazil, described as “…is your ticket out of this hell hole and onto an 80-minute guided tour through three or four decades of Brazilian funk, psychedelic, prog-rock and jazz.”
the third is Beat Konducta in Africa. Described as a 37-track instrumental hip-hop album produced by Madlib, inspired by and based on African records of the early 1970s – obscure & independent vinyl gems from afro-beat, funk, psych-rock, garage-rock & soul movements from different parts of Africa are all sampled to create a unique sound. The album also works as an instalment in Madlib’s Beat Konducta series, a number of albums Madlib put outs featuring his instrumental work with a special theme for each LP.
The fourth 420 Chalice all stars, a reggae record by DJ Madlib controlling the decks.
I think this project describes his anti-consumerism practice, he quickly involves himself in copy and pastes sort of productions that makes you consider what is original and remix. He also released this in a similar fashion to anti-consumerist culture, these albums were not properly promoted, as the short release time meant there was not enough time to do that. I wonder now about the consumerist and copyright laws involved in this? Did he clear his samples?
