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Mike Ladd

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14
Album Review

Vijay Iyer & Mike Ladd: InWhatStrumentals

Read "InWhatStrumentals" reviewed by Karl Ackermann


In 2003 Vijay Iyer and Mike Ladd released In What Language?, a hybrid jazz/hip hop response to post-9/11 American paranoia. Inspired by many related injustices, the inflection point was the extended detention, handcuffing and humiliation of a prominent Iranian filmmaker passing through JFK International Airport. Seventeen years later America was mired in multiple unprecedented crises, giving cause to repurpose that album. Iyer and Ladd had the instrumental masters from 2003, and release them here as InWhatStrumentals: Music from In What ...

378
Interview

Mike Ladd: Cerebral Refugee, Part 2-2

Read "Mike Ladd: Cerebral Refugee, Part 2-2" reviewed by Paul Olson


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 ...

539
Interview

Mike Ladd: Cerebral Refugee, Part 1-2

Read "Mike Ladd: Cerebral Refugee, Part 1-2" reviewed by Paul Olson


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 ...

175
Album Review

Mike Ladd: Negrophilia - The Album

Read "Negrophilia - The Album" reviewed by Rex  Butters


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. ...

296
Album Review

Mike Ladd: Negrophilia - The Album

Read "Negrophilia - The Album" reviewed by John Kelman


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 ...

223
Album Review

Mike Ladd: Negrophilia - The Album

Read "Negrophilia - The Album" reviewed by Farrell Lowe


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 ...

157
Album Review

Mike Ladd: Negrophilia - The Album

Read "Negrophilia - The Album" reviewed by James Taylor


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 ...

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280

Performance / Tour

Holding It Down: Vijay Iyer & Mike Ladd with Maurice Decaul

Holding It Down: Vijay Iyer & Mike Ladd with Maurice Decaul

Source: Michael Ricci

Acclaimed pianist/composer Vijay Iyer and celebrated poet/performer Mike Ladd (in collaboration with Iraq veteran Maurice Decaul) launch a new work of music and poetry commissioned by Harlem Stage's WaterWorks program. Building on their groundbreaking collaborations In What Language? (2003) and Still Life with Commentator (2006), Iyer and Ladd collaborate with young American war veterans of color from the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to create a new work (working title Holding it Down). Based on interviews with veterans of ...

143

Recording

Mike Ladd:nostalgialator

Mike Ladd:nostalgialator

Source: All About Jazz

By: Trevor Pour

Expectations can be dangerous. Mike Ladd's Nostalgialator was released in Germany (on the !K7 label) in 2004, but finally made its way to the States with a 2008 release on Definitive Jux. Before my first listen, I heard Nostalgialator described as a fusion of styles somewhere between Aesop Rock and Pink Floyd. As a near obsessive fan of both those artists, I couldn't wait to dig in. But to my surprise and disappointment, Nostalgialator fell on its ...

Photos

Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

InWhatStrumentals

Pi Recordings
2020

buy

Maison Hantée

Rogue Art
2009

buy

Negrophilia [The...

Love Records
2005

buy

Negrophilia - The...

Thirsty Ear Recordings
2005

buy

In What Language?

Love Records
2003

buy

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poet / spoken word

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