He's spent a lot of the past few years fixing into place, and then moving away from that place, eloquent fusions of hip-hop and jazz, inventing groups, and then playing all the roles and instruments in these imaginary groups, so that he's Kamala Walker of the Soul Tribe, Monk Hughes of the Outer Realm, Eddie Prince with the Fusion Band, Ahmad Miller of the Suntouch he's everyone in Yesterdays New Quintet, jamming among his many competing, combining selves. He's Prince as hallucinated by Philip K Dick, Coltrane running through the veins of Burroughs, himself more or less aka someone else altogether. The Last Electro-Acoustic Space Jazz & Percussion Ensemble is yet another alias of the sound-spinning, time-jumping, music-mapping many voiced multi-instrumentalist Madlib, who never stops, who cannot keep still and is hard to keep up with, as he sorts out his agile, vigilant mind by jumping from character to character, project to project, scene to scene, decade to decade, punch line to punch line.
It's jazz for those who like their jazz deeply cosmic, to suggest where the great Blue Note acts might be in a post-sampling, post-rock, post-web, post-computer game world, jazz for those who like their jazz to have a relationship with tradition that is both respectful and mischievous. As smart, accessible, gorgeous and right on the dissolving, accelerating now as it is, as elegantly conceived to look and sound great as a prized vinyl object, summoning all sorts of longing and learning, it doesn't fit into known grooves, or safely known avant-genres, even though ultimately it's jazz-related and rooted in hip-hop adventure. Then you can play Floating Points, Flying Lotus and Flying Lizards, and take it from there.Īctually, Miles Away is not likely to appear on many commercial playlists. Put it this way: it'll take you nicely on your radio show from Ascenseur pour l'échafaud Miles to this minute's Gorillaz.
You'll come across a new album by them called Miles Away(Stones Throw), which isn't totally what you think it is because of that title, and yet is – it's not directly a Miles thing but an electronically moderated tribute to a kind of hard, ethereal post-bop jazz that mixes the free and the arranged, the drum and the horn. And then, as a reward, it will take you somewhere. You might just want to type it into Google because it's a very lovely thing to type. Here's something you might want to type into Google to help you make your own personal radio show: the Last Electro-Acoustic Space Jazz & Percussion Ensemble. Meet the shape-shifting superstar of tomorrow… if you can keep up with him Written by Paul Morley and published in The Guardian, Sunday Main the column Paul Morley's Showing Off.