Description

1LP Vinyl – ATA029

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.When you dig into Madvillainy you will note many of the samples (Sun Ra, Bill Evans, Freddie Hubbard amongst others) lent a jazz oriented feel to the record, an ethos that, in turn, lent itself perfectly to the deconstruction and re-imagining by Abstract.

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.

This was all done above board of course. He made contact with Rob who was so intrigued by what Ghostlife sketched out that handed over the original stems with his blessing. This meet was around mid 2020 and Rob admitted he had forgotten all about it until his inbox started pinging in the summer of 2022.

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.