Jazz Articles

Mike Ladd: Cerebral Refugee, Part 2-2

by Paul Olson
April 20, 2005

Part 1 | Part 2

Spoken-word poet? Rapper? Alternative hip-hop producer? Sociology-minded conceptualist? Postmodernist? Mike Ladd is all of these. Ladd's 1997 debut album Easy Listening 4 Armageddon served notice that his was a major, original talent. Recent work--like his collaboration with Vijay Iyer, In What Language?, and his brand-new Thirsty Ear debut Negrophilia: the Album--stunningly demonstrate that this is a mature artist whose time has truly come. These two CDs are as much “jazz" recordings as they are anything ...

Mike Ladd: Cerebral Refugee, Part 1-2

by Paul Olson
April 18, 2005

Part 1 | Part 2

Spoken-word poet? Rapper? Alternative hip-hop producer? Sociology-minded conceptualist? Postmodernist? Mike Ladd is all of these. Ladd's 1997 debut album Easy Listening 4 Armageddon served notice that his was a major, original talent. Recent work--like his collaboration with Vijay Iyer, In What Language?, and his brand-new Thirsty Ear debut Negrophilia: the Album--stunningly demonstrate that this is a mature artist whose time has truly come. These two CDs are as much “jazz" recordings as they are anything ...

Mike Ladd: Negrophilia - The Album

by Rex Butters
April 16, 2005

Mike Ladd's much anticipated followup to last year's highly praised In What Language reunites him with his collaborator on that project, keyboardist Vijay Iyer. What knocks this outing into unexpected sonic originality may be their co-collaborator, Guillermo E. Brown. Best known for his work with the David S. Ware Quartet and contributions to projects by Matthew Shipp and DJ Spooky, Brown released Soul At the Hands of the Machine, an atmospheric densely layered humid slab of electronica, three years ago. ...

Mike Ladd: Negrophilia - The Album

by John Kelman
February 3, 2005

With a sound that is as forward-looking as it is aware of the past, poet/programmer Mike Ladd follows up his collaboration with keyboardist Vijay Iyer on last year's acclaimed What Is Language? (Psi) with Negrophilia - The Album. This time it's under his name rather than Iyer's and, consequently, a more specific look at his own musical and philosophical vision.

The term “poet" is used with intent, rather than “rapper." Ladd's prose aspires to something greater than simple rhyme, evoking ...

Mike Ladd: Negrophilia - The Album

by Farrell Lowe
February 2, 2005

William S. Burroughs turned the literary world on its ear with his “cut-up" style of writing. He simply chopped completed texts into pieces, mixed bunches of different texts together, then glued the results together into juxtaposed compositions. This often made for some interesting albeit convoluted reading. John Cage applied similar techniques to his writing and music composition in an attempt to free minds from following well-worn conceptual pathways. Mike Ladd's Negrophilia follows in those footsteps to some degree; the music ...

Mike Ladd: Negrophilia - The Album

by James Taylor
February 1, 2005

With each new release from Thirsty Ear's Blue Series, I find myself saying, “This is it--the perfect synthesis of free jazz, hip hop and electronica (DJ Spooky's Optometry ); no, this is it--an even better aesthetic revelation (El-P's High Water )!" Not to sound redundant, but Mike Ladd's latest, a mind-blending tag team effort with pianist Vijay Iyer, Thirsty Ear house drummer Guillermo E. Brown, and some freewheeling free jazz cohorts is, seriously, a near-perfect realization of ...