January 23rd and Louis Mackey

It was January 23rd, 2001 when Waking Life came out and appropriately enough, there were actually two Louis Mackeys at the premiere event. One of them was the philosophy professor featured in the film, and the other would evolve into a rapper with the same name 5 years later. Since Funky Motherfucker Yeah, the non-tenured Louis Mackey has been carrying a couple dozen torches too obscurely academic to explain here.

In 2011, Louis Mackey's fascination with Latin literature manifested into The Dioscuri, which is boom bap psychedelic rap that takes hours to unpack and decode. Like his namesake, Mackey firmly believes in the power of these ancient archetypes to find meaning in our lives today.





AH: The Dioscuri sounds like a broadcast from another planet. What was your muse for the sound of this album?

Dr. Quandary: We drew a lot of our inspiration from bands like and Arzachel, Ramases and the 13th Floor Elevators, and in the end the goal was to recreate the vibe of those old records under the guise of a hip hop album. Since almost all of the songs were built on a solid chassis of psych rock tracks, we made a collective decision to emulate that in the mix. As a result you’ll hear a lot of dirty reverb and delay, which were hallmarks of the genre at the time. Pairing just the right balance of those effects with modern compression techniques yielded pretty powerful results.

Louis Mackey: Lyrically I drew a lot from Emerson, Virgil, the French Revolution, Catallus Gaius, Hercules with Steve Reeves, Tacitus, Archimedes, Henry David Thoreau, Waking Life, suicidal depression, my ex girlfriend, delusional puffery and Whiskey.

For more on the Dioscuri project, check out this Audible Hype interview.



"Cleans and Dirties be damned. The Rolling Stones didn't invent the bawdy song: it's been around for some time. As for LSD and pot, they are what's happening, and it would be surprising if pop songs didn't take account of them. Rock 'n' roll didn't write the script, it only made the scene. But the main thing is that rock 'n' roll is the first original development in popular music since jazz. Groups like The Beatles and The Stones display a phenomenal melodic inventiveness and a harmonic and contrapuntal imagination that even us squares can dig." Signed (PROF.) Louis H. MACKEY Rice University Houston



Postscriptus: January 23rd, 2011 was also the day we dropped Dr. Quandary's Anthembanger -- which was damn fresh. The next Algorhythms release is going to be the Ganapatya EP, which took us by surprise but it's appropriate. Big thanks to everyone who helped promote the Custom Remix of Open Ended -- the response to that track has been Double Plus Bananamal. STAY TOONED.