[ aquarius records new arrivals — issue 185 ]

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MADVILLAINMadvillainy(Stones Throw)cd$ 15.98

I know, we were just raving about that Jaylib record (Madlib and Jay Dee from Slum Village) from a few months back. I think we even pulled out the ol' hip hop record of the year championship belt thinking the contest was OVER. But here it is a matter of weeks later and Madlib is back and dang if he hasn't outdone himself again! Doesn't hurt that he decided to team up with MF Doom (Viktor Vaughn, KMD, etc) and the combo is unbeatable. Madlib is in full effect, pulling out all the sonic stops. Of course, there's fat lazy beats, throbbing basslines and groovy jazzy samples, but that ain't all! Madlib's hip hopscapes are so dense and multilayered it's almost overwhelming. Hawaiian slide guitars slip and slide over syrupy funk bass lines, clipped bouncy funk glitched out and fuzzed up, human beat box butted up to jangly wah guitar, string sections soar and James Bond horns blare in the background, warbly movie theater pipe organs over disintegrating loops of old soundtracks, chopped up calypsos, groovy acid jazz electric piano, regular funk loops cut and snipped and rearranged into stuttery spastic alien funk, fluttering flutes, percussive pounding piano low end, all the while. clips from old B movies, sound effects and found sounds careen from ear to ear in a serious display of extreme stereo panning. And that's just the music. MF Doom (formerly of the godlike KMD and about a million other nom de plumes) is all over the record too, adding his laconic, idosyncratic flow to the mix, spitting rhymes that sound lazy and off the cuff, delivered in a just-woken-up mouthful-of-marbles mumble, but are just way too clever and funny and biting to be freestyled. His smooth, raspy delivery perfectly compliments Madlib's scratchy, muffled and mysterious groovescapes. And to add to the chaos, there are loads of guest MC's (a bunch of which just happen to be MF Doom alteregos!), Viktor Vaughn, Quasimoto (rhyming in his helium/chipmunks sped-up falsetto), Wildchild, and M.E.D. Also, the cd contains possibly the best video we've ever seen, done old Marvel comics style, but so cleverly edited and so perfectly synced to the song and with all sorts of clever animations and weird special effects. It like being a kid and being able to walk right into a comic book, travelling not just through the story, but the ads for selling seeds and magazines as well. So cool! And so weird. Definitely hip hop record of the year! Barring of course any sort of Madlib / MF Doom / Jay Dee / Doseone / Jay-Z / Ludacris / Method Man supergroup match-up! In that case we'll happily reconsider our vote! But for now, BUY THIS RECORD!