How about this for a splendid way to start the year – with news of new LP The Edge from producer Medline? If you’ve caught previous works by the Franco-Chilean, you’ll find he surpasses that material with ease on this new eleven-track project featuring jazz, funk and soul tracks famously sampled across hip-hop’s history. So is it a compilation LP like you used to get in the 90s when hip-hop sampling was big – a ‘Hear the tracks sampled by…’ type deal? Mais non – wash your mouth out! This, mes amis, is a covers LP – for our man is a multi-instrumentalist who put the project together in his home studio in France in the last two years (a feat all the more all amazing because he has no formal music theory background!) re-creating the classic tracks contained hereon in worshipful homage to the originals. So he’s a bit like a musical version of Borges’ Pierre Menard in Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote? Well, not quite. Firstly, he’s not attempting to recreate the work of a single artist and secondly, you can tell these aren’t actually the originals if you play them back-to-back with the originals. But you would have to listen back-to-back to tell Medline’s covers apart unless you knew the originals incredibly well. He may lack knowledge of musical theory but damn he’s got good ears.
And it’s a luxurious instrumental ride to boot with not just faithful recreations of the source material but fantastic production too since Medline is responsible for both mixing and mastering the album. Of course, thanks to Dr Dre everyone will recognise the opening bars of the title track, album centrepiece and David McCallum cover The Edge – while 90s underground hip-hop heads cannot fail to nod their heads to the neck-snap opening bars from Medline’s cover of Les DeMerle’s Beatles cover A Day In The Life. Meanwhile, if you’re an 80s kid though, you might just remember and recognise Denny Crockett cover Le Vieux Vaisseau from the soundtrack to the Ulysses 31 cartoon. Arguably, the more of hip-hop’s golden era of sampling that you’re familiar with (or indeed if you’re familiar with the 60s/70s/80s period of the originals), the more you’ll recognise on this. But whether those are familiar territories or not, you have just found your favourite new road trip/ dinner party mood-setting music long player.
(Out 15 January on My Bags Records)