Way back at the start of 2011, Peanut Butter Wolf put out an edition of the Stones Throw podcast highlighting music that was due out on the
label that year. After snippets of two great songs from the still-unreleased
second Madvillain album (one of which turned out to be a Doomstarks track), we
were treated to “Two from Rock Konducta.”
No other information was provided, and two years later the Rock Konducta project was still nowhere to be found. It seemed
destined to join the second Madvillain album, Supreme Team, a bunch of recorded
but unreleased Yesterdays New Quintet records, and who knows how many other
exciting projects in the overflowing boxes of never-to-be-released Madlib
music. A shame, since the two Rock
Konducta songs on the podcast were a promising move away from Otis’ normal
rap/jazz comfort zones.
Even though Rock
Konducta appeared to have been left unfinished, ‘Lib didn’t abandon rock
altogether. The sixth volume in his Madlib Medicine Show series, Brain Wreck Show, was a mix exploring
the farthest out rock records in his crates, including a ton of mind-destroying
Brainticket tunes. Soon after MMS #6, Madlib went over to Europe for some
(eventually cancelled) shows with the psychedelic voyagers in Embryo. It’s
still unclear what those shows would’ve entailed, but based on the advance
press it sounded like Madlib would have been onstage with a synth or some other
instrument playing alongside the band. Like when he spent thousands of dollars on
instruments because he up and decided he was going to make jazz music over a
decade ago, it looked for a while like Madlib was going to go full steam into
the world of rock. Unfortunately, right after these Embryo shows got cancelled,
the Rock Konducta went back into hibernation, and there was little indication
that that particular persona would be revived.
