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No. 5 in our tape series comes from none other than Philly wunderkind MALK, with his chimerical/chemical jazz quartet THE OT X-TET. Hot on the heels of his amazing collaboration with Bracken on the brilliant ROCK tape, there’s no let up in quality control from the elusive producer.

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As with his work with Hip Hop trio Mahatma X and his more electronic hued solo offerings, it’s impossible to pin his sound down to any one particular genre. With THE OT X-TET he points his feverish, scattershot productions in a jazz direction, most notably with a respectful nod to Madlib’s Yesterday’s New Quintet, project.

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After spending a year in London, ostensibly to further his academic career, he immersed himself in the capital’s burgeoning new jazz scene and The Bridge To Total Freedom was the result of fevered late night sessions, coalescing in a much more realised and nuanced set of tracks in comparison with his previous outings.

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Yes, you can call it jazz but this is jazz MALK's way. Retaining all the hallmarks of his skittish production style, the eleven tracks that make up the album seamlessly merge live drumming and instrumentation with programmed beats and samples that reference the many oddball memes that preoccupy this talented producer’s febrile imagination. From the get go it swings and it grooves with spacey keys sketching the album’s multifarious earworms.

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Eleven extended jazzual jams to lock into with your stimulant of choice.