Angles Without Edges

Album Review

Using jazz experimentation, education, and the unequivocal brilliance of his hip-hop creativity as a primary instrument, Madlib leads this record of paramount importance in the modern jazz and hip-hop worlds alike. Favoring swatches of lounge-heavy atmosphere and Fender Rhodes rivers to forever soulful infinity, big beats, and abstract soloing on everything from vibraphone to the turntable itself, Angles Without Edges is where music hoped to go by 2001. This is a hip-hop record made with jazz principles of improvisation, spacy cut-and-paste passages of drifting solos, and periods of vamping grooves that are layered handsomely with uncut breaks that build on top of themselves, eventually creating what may be the Bitches Brew of the new millennium. Released on the progressive and reputable Stones Throw label, also home to their Uno Esta 12" and Bomb Shelter 7", Angles is 19 tracks deep and doesn't stray in quality as the beats drum on. Highlights include the math jazzy "Julani," the soul eclipse in "Papa," and the outer space dub/samba in "Paladium."