Mike Ladd

Mike Ladd has joined forces again with pianist Vijay Iyer (from the popular In What Language? album) and renowned drummer Guillermo E. Brown. The idea for the album spawned from Petrine Archer-Straw's book of the same title that studies avant-garde Paris and black culture through fashion, literature and art in the ’20s. The album is a mix of jazz, hip-hop and electronica but has found its own sound through the variety of instruments used in the production. Songs like "Fieldwork," "Shake It," "World Wide Shrink Wrap" and "Blond Negress" all have spoken word in them, reminiscent of beat poetry that you would hear in a jazz club. The album goes from a straight-up jazz song like "The French Dig Latinos, Too" to a looser "In Perspective," which was all improvised in the studio. It's hard to put your finger on the sound but rest assured you haven't heard anything like it before.