Jaguar Sound

Album review

Conceived during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, Adrian Quesada's Jaguar Sound is the talented guitarist/producer's take on an instrumental hip-hop album. Locked down in Austin, he spent part of his days riding around town on a bicycle, listening to hip-hop. Inspired by the loops created by the Alchemist in particular, he started coming up with beats at home. Once he was able to call some friends and colleagues into his Electric Deluxe Studio, he turned the beats into fully realized songs inspired by late-night hip-hop, funky soul, and the swooning, orchestrated sound of '70s Italian film soundtracks that feel tailor-made to be played on a scratchy old vinyl LPs. Much like a classic DJ Shadow record, only with real instruments instead of samples, the album is a murky, moody head-nodder. Quesada's biting guitar leads are the key element of most tracks, though they are held down by a rock-solid rhythm section and set adrift on waves of pillowy sound by strings, gentle horns, and the occasional harp. Josh Garza's feather-light runs up and down the keys of a very vintage-sounding electric piano are another important facet of the incredibly layered sound. Quesada definitely shows off all his skills as a producer on the album, layering the instruments together like he was making a delicate, multi-level cake. Sometimes, it's a bright and almost strutting sound, like on "Rise of the Have-Nots" (a track where the bass player certainly makes their presence felt) or "Spirits," which bursts out of the speakers in a joyous parade of horns. These brassy moments are offset by quieter tracks like the summer-breezy "Fireflies" or the humidly psychedelic "Turks Cap." Quesada even finds room for a short acoustic-guitar-and-Hammond interlude with "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Girl." The album is a perfect balance of moods and textures that play off each other very nicely and give the listener a fully rounded listening experience. If he wasn't there already, it vaults Quesada into the top rank of artists like Madlib and Khruangbin, who take the spirit of hip-hop and soul, then give it a personal and idiosyncratic twist.
© Tim Sendra /TiVo