Madvillain Remixes

Trying to put the enigmatic producer Ghostlife into words is no easy feat, for a start very few people have ever met him. Best way to describe Ghostlife is Kyser Soze with a keyboard, minus all the criminal bits, an anonymous tactician with an ear for a woozy beat. 

It is perhaps then fitting that he should be pulled towards another artist who spent much of his career sowing the seeds of doubt in regard to his own identity, the much-lamented MF Doom. In this instance it is Doom’s collaborations with Madlib, resulting in the 2004 ground-breaking album Madvillainy, that got Ghostlife’s remix reflex twitching.

He decided to further ramp up the subterfuge (this is dream within a dream stuff) and remix some choice cuts from Abstract Orchestra’s interpretation of the record. For those who don’t know, Abstract Orchestra, led by saxophonist Rob Mitchell, are based on the classic jazz big band instrumentation of saxes, trumpets and trombones and features the cream of the north’s jazz scene.

Ghostlife wanted peel back the next layer of this onion and, inspired by Kaytranada’s organic synthesis of the hip hop aesthetic among slightly higher BPMs, Ghostlife began to pick tracks from Abstract’s Madvillain 1 and 2 to play around with.

All in all Ghostlife remixed 10 tracks, including “Raid”, “Fancy Clown”, “Curls”, and “Figaro”, and has forgone the big arrangements. Rather he has coaxed out hooks, and sampled small sections, dipping into Abstract Orchestra’s work with the steady precision of a watchmaker to create something new and exciting.