Quasimoto Album: “The Further Adventures of Lord Quas”

The Further Adventures of Lord Quas is the Trout Mask Replica of rap. Madlib, much like Captain Beefheart, has a unique style that is hard to penetrate and hard to pin down. The songs on this album aren't really songs per se, they are more like random clips and odd ball samples with the occasional spattering of rhyme thrown in. The album is dizzying to listen to. Their must be 50 or 60 little mini skits, song fragments, and other oddities sprinkled through the album. All this combines to make one of the best and innovative rap albums to come down the pipe this year.

Madlib/Quasimoto has created an innovative and unique production style that he created with the first Quasimoto album the Unseen, continued with the excellent Madvillian record, and continues to refine with this production. Overall I think that his production sounds more complete on this record than on Madvillian. What makes this a weaker release than Madvillian is the quality of lyrics and the MC involved.

Quasimoto is not as good as MF Doom. Quasimoto seems to be riffing on Doom's style throughout, and his voice can get kind of irritating. He sounds like Eminem on helium and without all the homophobic gay bashing. It's an interesting trick, kind of like what Prince did on If I Was Your Girlfriend, but extended for a whole album. His style can be grating though.

Overall, The Further Adventures of Lord Quas is a good album that fans of off-kilter alternative rap will love. If you like Dr. Octagon, MF Doom, Peanut Butter Wolf, or Aesop Rock, then you'll enjoy this. You want to be patient with it though, Madlib's style is like peeling an onion, you need to remove some of the outer layers before you can get the full effect of it.

The hype surrounding Quasimoto's 2000 debut album, The Unseen, rendered Madlib (aka Lord Quas, aka Otis Jackson Jr., aka DJ Rels, aka Monk Hughes) as a forever stoned, twenty-four hour beathead unable to function outside of his private basement studio. The albums' curious, multi-personality design had much of the hip-hop press wondering if Madlib was okay; the rock press, however, loved it. Was this another case of the alternative press turning a hip-hop act into a novelty, or were folks really grasping what Madlib was trying to do while standing on stage dressed as a six foot tall yellowish, furry, snouted creature?

Eventually word surfaced that while working on multiple serious projects, Madlib pieced together his Quasimoto concept on the side, never planning to release it. The story goes that Stones Throw owner/Madlib landlord Peanut Butter Wolf talked Jackson into taking a chance and releasing what was at the time perhaps the most daring hip-hop album to see widespread distribution. In the years since, Madlib has become arguably the most creative and prolific figure in underground hip-hop. And Lord Quas? He's done a nice job of dividing hip-hop fans with his lunacy, and believe it or not, he's back for more mischief with his unimaginable sophomore album, The Further Adventures of Lord Quas.

Spread out over twenty-six tracks, Adventures plays out more like a Captain Beefheart or Frank Zappa project than your typical rap release. Using more samples than any standard ten rap albums combined, Madlib has created an ambitious sound menagerie that can hardly keep it's focus long enough to ever hit the two minute mark. Mixing oddball samples, vocal experiments, various sound-bites, and other unidentifiable sources with beats and an occasional rap, Jackson doesn't tell a story, but further sculpts the world he shares with his high-pitched alter-ego Lord Quas.

So what exactly is Quas like, you ask? First off, he is the bad character. Much like Madlib, Quas is a big fan of the greens. In fact, similar to The Unseen, Adventures often feels like a testament to the raw creative madness that can be brought on by a little bit of reefer, or in Jackson's case, a boat load. Rather than exploring themes, Madlib focuses on style and attitude, spending the glut of his time developing the personality of his all-too-bored studio partner Quasimoto.

Equal parts funny and confusing, Adventures is not for the everyday rap (or rock) listener. In fact, Adventures isn't for the everyday mind. With repeat listens, the beats start setting in and the subtle themes and jokes become lovably novel. Believe it or not, the vocal effects, bothersome as they may first seem, might even start to make sense. Quas is not here to be easy, Madlib makes that very clear from beginning to end with only the single, "Rappcats Pt.3," coming off as accessible.

Often times feeling more like a hip-hop version of a Cheech and Chong film, Adventures retains a high entertainment value throughout; that is, if you realize before pressing play that you are in store for a wholly madcap listening encounter. Jackson already has a number of first-rate hip-hop and jazz albums under his belt; to some, Adventures is just another peep into Madlib, hip-hop's current classic character, and his studio shadow, Lord Quas, the bad character.

if u posses at least some form of intelligence and have a good sense of humor, dont sleep on this one! especially if u actually listen to the lyrics. but the beats on this are so ill, it runs with dr. octagynocologist but its more cerebral, insightful, and multidimensional. it goes great with a volcano vaporizer

Considered one of 2000's most accomplished (if not indeed the best) leftfield Hip-Hop albums. Quasimoto was intitally a side-project for prolific Hip-Hop producer 'Madlib'. An idea that he'd been working on (on & off) since 1996, and a completely ludicrous idea of having a Madlib himself cast as the straight-talking weed obsessed rapper, with 'Quasimoto' (Madlib's voice electronically altered, and sounding remarkably like someone having inhaled too much helium), as the stoned cartoonish extra-terrestrial, with a fixation on smoking a lot, Wack rappers and weed-fuelled consipracy theories. The first album was a masterpiece of, off-beat stoned humour, free-associative sped up raps, Bizarre skits, and some of the most inventive and agreeable Jazz & Funk inflected instrumental Hip-Hop breaks & Production (thanks to Madlib), over which the lyrics were laid. And although the helium voices repelled some, those that got the idea & Concept, quickly made others aware, and the albums reputation spread by word of mouth.

2005, takes Madlib's concept a step-further on the follow-up album, with ideas and concepts flung together without much in the way of a liner structure, it's almost as if he had so many ideas for the whole 'Quasimoto' universe that it would take several records to realise them all. The first album (after listening to this record) feels more like an introduction for the multitude of experimentation that would have been a little too far-flung to include on the first record, as on this album...Madlib's love of obscure beat-heavy Funk / Soul / Jazz fusions are arranged in such a way, that go beyond the Hip-Hop hybrids of the first album. Grooves lurch from left to right, tunes suddenly stop and morph into something completely different, samples frequently burst over tracks without any warning, production wizardry dominates the album with a uncompromising approach that it feels a little intimidating at first. So much so, that It the first albums off-centre grooves feel positively pedestrian in comparison.

So with this far more experimental fusing of Hip-Hop with just about anything, it opens the way for an album that is far more unique sounding than its predecessor, yet arguably slightly harder to penetrate, whether its: quirky Thumping hard-edged Electro ("Greenery"), slinky bass heavy hip-Hop beats moving things along ("Crime"), mind-bending synth-laded Electro-booty bass ("Hydrant Game"), Cut & Paste stuttering synth-fused rare groove ("Don't Blink"), twitching soul incrusted percussion-led groove, that's becomes frequently warped and jumps from Jazz to Hip-Hop samples ("Players of the Game"), Classic Quasimoto styled old-school Hip-Hop spliced with Jazz-funk, that stops and starts with vocal cuts interspersed ("Bus Ride"), psychedelic Soul-Jazz, which is actually ripped from a fantastic psychedelic-soul track by an artist called "Doris", who's "You never come closer" track this is, with "MF Doom" superbly rapping over ("Closer"), Drum Hi-Hat crashes mixed with Dj Spin-back sounds, overlayed with Indian 'Bollywood' chorus samples, and yet bizarrely works really well ("Maingirl"), upbeat Piano-led summery jazz, with smooth soul ("Bartender say"), sweeping Jazz horns, hung over tight Hip-Hop soul, that's largely reminiscent of the first Quasimoto album ("Another Demo Tape"), slow burning twinkingly instrumental 80's soul, that gets a street-smart freestyle rap over courtesty of M.A.D ("The Exclusive"), triumphant DJ shadow-esque referencing turntable electronic beats & booming intermittent bass ("Fatbacks"), old-school Jazz & Hip-Hop that collide into a simple clicky warped beat-reliant funk ("Shroom Music"), celebratory northern shouty soul-funk, mixed with turntable beats & crashing cymbals fuse perfectly here, in arguably one of the best tracks ("Rappcats, Pt 3").

This album is a natural progression from the previous album, and is production-wise far more experimental than the first album, with moods in music shifting rapidly and without warning, tracks start one way, and then stop and morph into something completely different and musically there is far less reliance on Hip-Hop sounds than before, and the music pushing more determinedly into funk / Soul / Rare groove / synth-keyboards than before...in fact such is the wildly eclectic approach here, that it almost begins to feel like an avant-garde form of beat production. Samples are in abundance here and are littered across the whole album, and vary wildly in their relevance, being draw from a huge back catalogue of sources: Sfi-dialogue, Jazz musicians (a favourite of Madlib's), old commercials, Cartoons (sounds like a Warner Bros sample in there somewhere), educational soundbites, and various other obscure vocal samples that Madlib was able to get this hands on. But for those of you that weren't convinced of the brilliance of the first album, will find even less here to sway their opinion, and if the helium voices irritated first time around, there is no let up on this album (even though Madlib lyrics and vocal timing have improved ever-so slightly), and if you're new to the Quasimoto sound, then starting with the more accessible first album, would be a very good idea. Because the production here, pushes the boat out even more than before, and may be hard going for some. But then this album doesn't seem like it was designed to snag a new audience, as it takes the whole 'Quasimoto' concept and runs away with it. It's more likely that this is purely for existing fans, that feel that the quasimoto concept still had some mileage in it, and on that premise Madlib delivers, possibly an album with next level production, and a sense of smoked-out humour with its tongue firmly in its cheek. Admittedly the novelty of the whole 'Quasimoto' concept isn't as unusual and surprising second time around, so Madlib has had to rely on this exceptional prodcution skills to counter-act consumer indifference, and believe me.....he's pushed the bar in terms of distinctive production, god knows where he goes from here.

With so much greenery on the planet, thank god for Lord Quas.

So this review requires a bit of a story. Three weeks ago I was sitting around with some friends when one suggested we listen to some guy named Quasimoto. I had heard of Madlib, Lootpack and Madvillain, but for some reason the Unseen, Quas' first album, eluded my notice. We listened to it, and the very next day I ran out, bought it, and put it on my headphones until I memorized it. The only album that had ever had that effect before was the chillest album of all time: Tribe's Midnight Marauder's.

So unlike the initiated, I have not been waiting for five years, with my expectations building for that long. I picked up the album today, and I am as blown away as the first time I heard Unseen.

It certainly is strange, with samples from all across our cultural conscious, but this is not some random trip. The album is meticulously contructed, and Quas throws out verses that will dull down your rewind button until it doesnt work anymore. It has a consistent and totally distinct flavor, but this is hip-hop. It is a fully realized landscape, with recurring themes, strange landmarks and incredible, simply incredible beats that roll like hills and waves beneath the vocals.

Astounding. This will not come out of my headphones until every second is on continual play in my brain, much like Unseen.