LP: Malik Flavors - Ugly Beauty EP

Artist: Malik Flavors
Album: Ugly Beauty EP
Label: Stones Throw
Released: 2004

Review: Jazz cats, soul freaks and hip-hop heads unite! When you get there, bow down to your lord Otis Jackson... I mean Madlib... I mean Malik Flavors! Ugly Beauty is yet another project from Stones Throw mainstay and red-eyed hip-hop producer Madlib's Yesterday's New Quintet project. It wasn't enough that Madlib wanted to bring traditional jazz instruments into his studio and teach himself how to play each one. It wasn't enough that Lib's dirty funky jazz took on a life of its own when he ascribed a different alias to himself for each part played on the records. No. Madlib had to take it a step further and create a solo release and a ridiculously fantastic back story for a few of his alter-egos and let them run wild, releasing their very own EP.

For those of you familiar with Yesterday's New Quintet, you know that each release or offshoot from the fabled group brings you a loosely played and tightly produced recording of some of the greatest jazz being released this side of Oz. For those of you not in the know, think Jack Kerouac literary riffs on jazz all fed through a sequencer and spit out on vinyl in it's base emotional form to keep you going when the benzedrine runs out.

The Malik Flavors EP displays a wide array of Madlib's influences, frenetically interpreted and thrown together as if they were played live in a dark jazz club to an audience of zero and a cast of thousands. Though by no means a cohesive release, the seven track Ugly Beauty EP contains some of my favorite Yesterdays New Quintet Music to date. With the song Dayscape, the sounds of Ethiopian music from the late 60s comes to mind with a beat that wavers but doesn't stop and a wild flute that overrides and strings along the other player(s). Storm sounds like a voice mail message left by Sun Ra from a club on Saturn with a tinkling twisting piano/percussion encounter that will have you lifting the needle and dropping it right back at the beginning of the song, just so you can figure out what is happening. The last track, Mind Expansion, calls upon the spirit of Pharoah Sanders to give the band an ethereal sound like a sweaty prayer.

Any fans of the freer side of melodic jazz will dig this hop-scotch of a record and finally have something that their most hardcore hip-hop buddies will be able to relate to. If this EP doesn't get the blood flowing and the generations joining hands, I'm not sure there is much hope in modern music left.

Rating: 4.25 / 5

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