Polar Bear With Jyager / Common Ground

Leaf

On the face of it, a seemingly unbridgeable stylistic chasm separates innovative jazz maven Sebastian Rochford and Portugal-born, London-based rapper Jyager Maktwist. But as anyone familiar with either artist's work will appreciate, categorizations have little meaning. In the six years he's been recording as leader of Polar Bear, Rochford has demonstrated an innate feel for creative collaboration, and records like (Mercury Prize-nominated) Held on the Tips of Fingers pays scant attention to attempts to pigeonhole him. Polar Bear's fourth album, Peepers, released in March 2010 to almost universal acclaim, has only consolidated his reputation as one of British music's most diverse and in-demand percussionists. Anyone who heard the mixtape he compiled earlier this year wouldn't be surprised that he's a longtime fan of hip-hop and grime. Jyager moved to London in 1993, days before his seventh birthday, and immersed himself in the garage scene, pursuing hip-hop lyricism as garage gave way to grime. With the 2009 release of his Encrypted Scriptures debut on YNR, the label co-founded by Brit-rap heavyweight Jehst, Jyager established his formidable rep. Whether rapping in French and Portuguese or rhyming about fairytales over Al Green samples, he's every inch Rochford's equal as a genre-defying iconoclast. The pair arrived at common ground in this concise, 25-minute mini-album, where music almost entirely derived Peepers samples collides with Jyager's intuitive word-pictures. All but two of the Common Ground project's nine tracks are based on manipulations of a vinyl copy of the original album--the exceptions are the opening track, "Recording in Secret," built from an improvisation by Polar Bear member Leafcutter John, and "Dont Think I Wont," based on an unreleased version of Peepers opener "Happy for You."

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