Sound Ancestors, his new album, is a rare entry in his vast catalog to be billed straightforwardly as a Madlib solo release, not a collaboration with a rapper, or a record by one of several fictitious jazz players and ensembles he's invented, or an entry in an arcane thematic series. But it, too, is a joint effort, this time with Kieran Hebden, the electronic producer better known as Four Tet, who curated, edited, and arranged it's 16 tracks from a body of hundreds of recordings that Madlib sent him over a period of two years. Their process reminds me of 2003's Shades of Blue, which Madlib created by raiding the vaults of Blue Note Records, sometimes chopping the original jazz recordings intricately and sometimes letting them unfold for long stretches without much apparent editing. Now, Madlib is the one opening his archives, and Four Tet is the one listening and assembling.

Kieren Hebden: “I was listening to some of his new beats and studio sessions when I had the idea that it would be great to hear some of these ideas made into a Madlib solo album ... arranged into tracks that could all flow together in an album designed to be listened to start to finish ... we decided to work on this together with him sending me tracks, loops, ideas and experiments that I would arrange, edit, manipulate and combine. I was sent hundreds of pieces of music over a couple of years.”

Tracklist: