It's tough not to love a schizophrenic genius. Changing personas like t-shirts, Madlib has produced a rich, impressive body of work, breaking boundaries and pushing his genre forward with the restless ease of a prodigy. His credentials are stellar: His jazzy, rough-edged production has been the driving force behind Madvillain, Lootpack, Quasimoto, and a slew of major hip-hop luminaries. But it's not Madlib's talent that's in question on his latest release, Tribute to Brother Weldon-- it's his discretion.
It's hard to figure out who to blame for this washout. When he fell back into the Bomb Shelter studio at Chateau Stones Throw to meditate on the death of one of his heroes, Madlib was most likely experiencing less a moment of inspiration than a period of mourning. Critically acclaimed keyboardist and composer Weldon Irvine helped set the stage for the soul jazz that came to dominate seminal 70s jazz labels like CTI and Prestige, and had lauded Madlib's work under the Yesterdays New Quintet moniker. After Irvine's suicide in 2002, Madlib produced a suite of songs inspired by Irvine and his adventurous bridging of James Brown-style soul and improvisational jazz. These tracks sat for two years before Stones Throw, presumably with his blessing, released them earlier this month.
Recorded under the name of one of his fictional Yesterdays New Quintet bandmates, Tribute to Brother Weldon is nothing short of baffling. These songs billow out like a nebulous cloud, thick with swirling eddies of meandering percussion and fleeting splashes of melody, but the storm never comes. Madlib is reaching for the expansive free jazz of Pharaoh Sanders and the electric funk of Eddie Harris, but without the direction provided by their blazing solos, the music just blows over. I'm still trying to pick out high points, or at least notable moments, but these sketches are too indistinct. Why he would go this murky route in tribute to a deeply lyrical soloist like Irvine is a mystery.
Still, the album carries a vaguely reverential tone, as if Madlib were glancing towards the heavens for a sign yet to come. The instrumentation is diverse-- at one point or another he noodles on kalimba (thumb piano), flute (or synth?), Rhodes, and Hammond, and contributes indeterminate electronic murmurs from his reliable Roland 303. The beats he sets in motion on each track almost approach a formal structure, and technically sound great-- muffled bass drums, cowbell, woodblock, and hand drums all get a spin-- but they never fully gel or form complete melodies.
A song-by-song breakdown is sort of pointless, as every distinctive glimmer flashes and is gone before settling into the consciousness, but I'll give it a shot: The blubbery analog throb of "A Piece for Brother Weldon" adds interesting texture, as do the song's tweeting high-end keys, and there's a brief commingling of sounds that, in a rare moment of clarity, actually make sense. "Time" stirs with layers of keys and organ dappled by chimes and shakers, spotlighting Madlib's gift for intriguing arrangements, but, like all of these tracks, does so without a satisfying buildup or resolution. A warm rush of bass and pitch-shifted keys opens "Nodlew's Sea", and its somewhat consistent, mellow mood is a welcome (if temporary) refuge. "Welldone" builds a narcotic haze on atmospheric effects, and the opening bass and rimshot beat of "Keys" shows promise but quickly reveals a half-finished idea. In fairness, any sliver of song taken outside the album's context could entice listeners, as all the right elements for an intriguing jazz record are in place. But for heads looking for beats, rhymes, or life-- even the minimalist kind found on Yesterdays New Quintet's recent Stevie album-- 65 minutes of freeform Madlibbing will likely be too much to stomach.
Madlib has said of his music, "I'm just trying to get it done and go to the next." Studio time is for rehearsal time, basically, for someone so endlessly prolific. And that's exactly what this experiment sounds like: a rehearsal that was probably never meant to see the light of day. Fortunately, his brilliance is so formidable that even a bruiser like this one won't do him much harm. Tribute might be a chink in his armor, but Madlib is on a personal musical crusade that demands he never look back.
