Marques Toliver - Studying For My Ph.D

Getting a mixtape right is a fine art - an exercise in selection and references. And it's a medium critical darling Marques Toliver takes to with aplomb - appropriately titled Studying For My Ph.D, the tape has a refined, educated feel to every track. At every moment it remains inherently a thing of pure class.

Opener Chaos is a fitting melange of assorted noise, washing across the senses in a seemingly random pattern. But somehow, amidst its eerie choral parts, it works. It feels aged, in the most beautiful sense - a kind of sepia toned bewonderment, the joy and rapture of gazing longingly at old photographs.

'I wanted to find beauty not in order and neatness' says Toliver of the piece - a bold statement, but one effortlessly proved true here. In its pic'n'mix appropriation of classic R&B and soul samples, the tape takes on the character not just of Toliver, but of a varying swathe of musical history. Its gloriously ambitious, but the real skill portrayed here is that it never feels strained or like an aching effort to be 'cool'.

For so much of the tape, Toliver is content just to let instrumentals play out - gorgeous string sections hum away in the background, or short stabs of brass and woodwind punctuate vocals - its a collage of artful delicacy.

Tracks like The Answer and Astrology sound like the de-tuned medium between two radio stations - not quite one thing or the other, but an impossible mid-state inbetween. The mixtape feeds from this lost space, flowering into something elusive and magical. And it's versatile too - half-way through it flicks from grainy classical influences and spoken-word bliss to minimalist electronica and beats.

If Toliver proves anything here, it's a true study in mixtape mastery.

MARQUES TOLIVER - STUDYING FOR MY PH.D by MarquesToliver