Other highlights include “Lifetime (Lifeline),” with its exciting blend of percussion instruments, and “The String (Heavy Jones),” in which a sampled string section is subtly modified, looped and relooped to great effect as the song progresses.īut while there is much to like about the album, it is also not without its flaws. The beat is forward-marching, and a voice calls out, “have no fear.” Yancey is gone, Madlib seems to say, but his music will last. “Infinity Sound (Never Ending)” features driving percussion and synthesizers. The work isn’t overwhelmed by melancholy, however. If this is not quite earth-shattering stuff, it’s nevertheless moving and sincere.
And in the next song, “Do You Know (Transition),” a voice repeats, “Do you think it’s fair?” It all works to communicate, by effective and economic means, the feeling of someone in mourning who simply cannot shake the thoughts of a tragedy. In the song “No More Time (The Change),” a voice calls out sorrowfully, “There’s no time now to change,” as if to acknowledge that Yancey’s growth had been suddenly interrupted, that the artist was on the cusp of something that would now be left a promise unfulfilled. Loops of jazz guitar, keyboards and bass are blended with all the sensitivity and expressiveness one usually finds in the artist’s work. Madlib avoids the bombastic drum programming commonly associated with hip hop production in favor of a softer sound, often with hand claps or the click of a snare drum played with cross-sticking on the backbeat. The work is entirely instrumental with the exception of occasional vocal snippets sampled from obscure records discovered by Madlib in used record stores around the world.
But at their best, volumes 5 and 6 capture, in their elaborate sample-based compositions, the sense of sadness felt for the loss of a young man-a young artist-whose life is cut short. One can point to other recordings in Madlib’s extensive catalogue of albums that are superior, including earlier entries in the Beat Konducta series. Madlib’s album is in many ways a moving tribute to his late friend, though certainly not a flawless work.
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