It’s been five years since the helium-voiced schizo-rap of Quasimoto’s The Unseen, a landmark album in the hip-hop universe. The Unseen was the essence of laid-back creativity, sounding as if it was recorded from a smoke filled room with Lord Quas orchestrating the affair from the comfort of a vintage couch. Quasi’s lucid wisdom included a lot of weed, an incredible imagination and an intriguing blend of 80s cheese, scratchy jazz records and 70s soul. Since then, Quasimoto has been busy releasing records as Madlib and recently collaborated with MF Doom on the widely acclaimed Madvillain record. Production-wise, this new LP shares a lot of similarities with last year’s Madvillainy. Beats are often muffled and subdued, while samples are prominent in the mix. In other departments, The Further Adventures of Lord Quas is all about the high-pitched one.
Perhaps due to Madlib’s productivity in the last few years, The Further Adventures of Lord Quas is a tight rock. While samples may seem to be inserted for no apparent reason, they soon reveal their relation to the course of things with repeated listens. The new record lacks some of the ambiguity of The Unseen, however it only suffers slightly as a result. Lyrically, The Further Adventures of Lord Quas is full of nuggets of wisdom, sly observations, but many of the rhymes definitely evoke the conventional hip-hop canon. Whether Lord Quas is proclaiming his allegiance to, making a comment on, the rap game is up to the listener. Whatever way you look at it, its all pretty fucking marathon. Here is the formula for successful appreciation – think, listen, and rock to it.
On "Bus Ride," Quasi’s tight rhymes flow over a hypnotic backdrop, interspersed with outbursts from Old Willy, a character from the street, who proclaims at the end of the track, "Bravo! Suck out of my ass with a straw. You trying to make a fool out of me!" Guest appearances by any number of personalities only buttress Lord Quas’ unruly hodgepodge. At 26 tracks, it’s a sprawling trip through the streets, the haze, around panhandlers, on the bus, to the club, accepting shitty demos – The Further Adventures of Lord Quas is a disjointed, sporadic work of art.
