My Bags France Schallplatten & CDs

Review: French-Chilean producer Medline has long been playing the crossover between hip-hop, soul, jazz funk and Latin. Considering his gifts as a multi-instrumentalist, it's no surprise his tracks are bursting with expressive playing, but the real magic lies in how he applies these skills to the hip-hop template. That's demonstrated beautifully here on this 7" which is paying tribute to Eric B & Rakim, rendering 'Don't Sweat The Technique' and 'I Know You Got Soul' as lush arrangements with all manner of instrumental ornamentation rendering the flow of the MCs on these bona fide classics.

Review: Medline is on a mission to serve up his own fresh cover versions of well known tunes from the movies, library music vaults, jazz funk scenes and worldwide rare grooves. He is one man who plays flute, guitar, keyboard, pads, drums, percussions and violin and lays down each part of the tune and then puts them all together with some extra studio touches at a later date. He mixes the music himself so that it is live sounding and vibrant, and then shares it with the world. These latest two cuts are heavy Afrobeat gems with cosmic synth work, psyched-out melodies and jazz invention that makes them captivating in the extreme.

Review: Given that the original pressing of Medline's wholehearted tribute to A Tribe Called Quest sold out in record time earlier this year, this speedy repress is more than welcome. The album's genius lies in the French producer's imaginative, fusion style approach. Each of the eight tracks is loosely based not only on the ATCQ tracks that inspired Medline as a youth, but also on the original jazz, soul, funk and jazz-funk cuts the legendary New York crew sampled on them. As a result, while some of the live beats and grooves sail close to hip-hop, the resulting music is closer in sound and style to jazz. In other words, boundaries are brilliantly blurred and the results are consistently spellbinding.