The Madlib Mystique : interview + mp3

"The equipment doesn't matter,

it's the vibe you put into it.

If music sounds good, music sounds good"

(Madlib)

La semaine dernière, Jeff Weiss se lançait pour le L.A. Weekly à la poursuite de Madlib, ce qui n'est jamais une mince affaire tant on sait que le prolifique bonhomme est insaisissable... Dur à joindre : "Forget Twitter — he doesn't even use e-mail" !!! La pugnacité du journaliste fut cependant récompensée par un bel article : "The Madlib mystique" et une interview exclusive, malgré quelques reports...

On y découvre donc un Madlib fidèle à l'image que l'on se fait de lui : acharné de travail et brillantissime. Un type qui dort deux ou trois heures par nuit et carbure au café et à la weed.

Morceaux choisis :

Madlib est "surrounded by samplers, CDs, cassette decks, 4- and 8-track recorders, keyboards and drum kits. No computers. Instead there are records stacked so high they seem like obelisks. A collection described by J. Rocc as filled with the most "dirty and dusty LPs imaginable." Not just hip-hop, jazz and soul. Everything from witchcraft records and Detroit techno to obscure German Krautrock. Calling Madlib a crate-digger is like describing Albert Ayler as a saxophone player — barely accurate. Madlib doesn't just collect records, he revolutionizes them. And the thousands of albums crammed into the three-room space aren't some completist fetish, they're functional tools".

"Everyone can listen to music, but Madlib's ears detect alternate frequencies. He's a ghost-whisperer summoning analog ancestors".

"A mad scientist breaking beats down to their molecular level, seamlessly stitching loops and reshaping them into something with preternatural groove".

"Peanut Butter Wolf says, reminiscing about the days when Madlib turned their collective home's family room into a makeshift rehearsal space. "He'd make do with what he had. There was an upright bass with just one string and he'd still use it effectively. He was insane on the drums too. I'd wake up to the sound of him playing to jazz records for hours. He seemed to be doing it because he loved it, not because he necessarily wanted to improve".

Le hip-hop ? : "I grow tired of it every three or four years".

"Dilla was a John Coltrane–type dude. He was always on a higher level than me. He inspired my music to become looser and more soulful. If you look at our beat tapes, you can see when I went in his direction, and when he went in mine".

"In an environment where shameless self-promotion, technology and a surfeit of media sources have created a false air of omniscience, Madlib has retained a sense of mystique. He's a regular dude with irregular gifts, a skull hermetically sealed by sound, so much that the outside world has no bearing. Not only does he refuse to court commercial and critical tastes, but he ignores their very existence, exchanging modernity's jittery zeitgeist with an analog romanticism for the days of crates of wax and weed".

"Madlib doesn't need any of the trappings of success. He's content to loom in the background and create alternate cosmologies — aware that it's always better to be heard than to be seen".

L'exemplaire Stones Throw offre un titre du nouveau volet de la série Medicine Show de Madlib en téléchargement gratuit. L'album sortira le 27 juillet. En CD. Et en triple vinyl numéroté !!!

La présentation du projet et le track-list ici...

James Poyser - Karriem Riggins - Madlib, "Funky Butt", Madlib Medicine Show #7 : High Jazz (Stones Throw, 2010)