Magic Malik’s career has been taking on a very peculiar dimension within the framework of a major solo project opening the way to a new and cerebral type of jazz, in the same way as American-based Colemanian M-base Jazz, or Belgian avant-gardist Akamoon.

Malik brought out his fifth work in October 2005. While his band is usually made up of five musicians, this project required no less than ten musicians, all searching for a serial and polyrhythmic jazz with occasional free flavours. Like a new experimental phase of the flutist, XP-2 is indeed continuing the work that had been initiated on the two-CD album entitled 00-237 XP 1, extended with 13 XP Song's Book.

Like "studies" on the form and architecture of compositions and musical language, XPs (generic term for "experiences") make it possible for musicians to enter rhythmic, harmonic and melodic matters under formal constraints, and to come out of these according to participants’ inspiration. These are selected by the leader with a view to fitting their personalities and ideas into unutilised spaces. Apart from Malik Mezzadri, orchestra members include Sarah Murcia (bass), Or Salomon (keyboards), Maxime Zampieri (percussions), Denis Guivarch (saxophone), as well as several guest artists such as Gilles Coronado (guitar), Dj Rebel (turn-tables), Jean-Luc Lher (electric bass), Bo Wanderwerf (baritone and tenor saxophone), and Steve Coleman (alto saxophone).

Having a taste for change and “musical research” probably comes from geographical as well as musical openness.

Malik was born in Guadeloupe in 1969. Before turning fifteen, he was a secretive kind of boy, not well motivated by school work and immersed in the theatre world (his father, Arthur Lerus, is a playwright and a director who founded the “Théâtre du cyclone”). Malik learned musical notation every Wednesday afternoons and rarely left his recorder alone: "I was playing sweet little tunes; I used to improvise wherever I was… It was my world, my time for privacy". Malik only clicked for the first time when he met Marc Rovelas who taught flute in Pointe-à-Pitre: "For me this was a revelation. He made me discover Bach, then Xenakis, Ravel and Stockhausen… I was dazzled, and I suddenly understood that my life was making sense!" The shock was such that he left school – even though he was in Grade 11 – and decided to go to France to study at the Music Academy of Marseille.

Malik was not yet eighteen and had a lot of work to do to reach the level required for the course, but he had found his way in life. He passed with distinction at the Academy (obtained first prize) and went to Paris in 1988 "to get away from the classic genre and try something new". Once in Paris, it was not long before he joined a whole group of artists then in full swing: Human Spirit. "This was a great time in my life! These guys taught me how to live on the road, on stage, how to live life, ho to have dreams and precious sharing moments with the public; that’s when I really discovered live, non elitist but requiring music. In short, how to build a life for oneself from very little: you leave and then decide as you go along, and you keep going forward while you continue to love what you do".