Jackson Conti

Jackson Conti isn't a neo-soul balladeer, a hip-hop artist or even a singer-songwriter, but rather, Jackson Conti is the team of famed hip-hop/down-tempo producer Otis Jackson, Jr. (Madlib) and veteran Brazilian drummer Ivan "Mamão" Conti. In other words, it's the dream project of a very specific kind of music nerd, i.e. anyone who is passionate enough about the tepid acid-jazz of Jackson's Yesterday's New Quintet project to seek out one of his more significant vintage influences in a contemporary context. On those terms, Sunjinho just lives up to expectations, balancing fairly tired Spanish guitars, predictable synth pads, and daiquiri-strength xylaphones with layers of fervent horns, manic, over-driven piano, and—not often enough—stoned vocal passages. "Papaia" is the longest track, working enough different angles to cast a heavy spell, while female, scat showcase "Upa Nenguinho" is the most creative and ecstatic, closing triumphantly with a spacey coda of dubbed-out atmospheres and wah-wah piano.

Jackson has to be aware of this material's potential fate as elevator or hotel-lobby ambience, and his solution seems to be an attempt to make his tracks a bit too dense to be comfortably ignored. He succeeds in that often enough, but only rarely comes up with an arrangement vital enough to convince you this collaboration needed to happen. In fact, the album's chief failure is that the rhythms don’t impress themselves as anything special. Conti is clearly an expert drummer, and appreciably one of Jackson's muses, but nothing on Sunjinho is likely to make him one of yours.

—Nate Cunningham
07.02.08