mad box.

From Ed Banger Records
Between producing music for Mos Def (three tracks on the album The Ecstatic, among which the fabulous ‘Marvelous Times’ which was used for Obama’s campaign) and Kanye West, doing music for advertisements, producing Sebastien Tellier’s My God is Blue, and his many DJ sets, it took ten years for Mr Flash to deliver, at long last, his debut album. It isn’t surprising when you know what a perfectionist he is – he admits to having started the record over a dozen times.
Mr Flash’s debut album is titled Sonic Crusader (in reference to an article in Dazed & Confused on the start of Ed Banger), which perfectly illustrates his musical philosophy. 15 tracks – among which the classics ‘Domino’ and ‘Motorcycle Boy’ – resulting in a genuine sonic odyssey condensing all of Mr Flash’s obsessions: his passion for phat and melodic hip hop, his taste for cinematic and illustrative sequences, his influences of polished 70′s and 80′s productions like Prince, AC/DC, Herbie Hancock or Sun Ra, and electro notions nourished by new-wave and industrial music. The whole thing is enveloped in a cloak of musical grandiosity. A sonic crusade shaped like a rollercoaster of influences that Mr Flash orchestrates with subtlety, taking us in one fell swoop from the sweaty dumps of a club to the melancholy of California highways, sneaking us into the jungle and having us wake-up dressed as a modern crooner, before throwing us head first into the twinkling stars. In the end, it’s the perfect soundtrack to a film that’s never been shot.