Medeski Martin & Wood [ tickets ], currently touring to promote their latest album, "The Dropper" (Blue Note), are a tough group to pigeonhole.

If you caught up with them in 1996 with "Shack-man" (Gramavision), John Medeski's swampy B-3 organ made your walls sweat. If you picked up 1999's "Tonic" (Blue Note), you were treated to spirited improvisation on acoustic piano, bass and drums. And if you heard them backing up legendary guitarist John Scofield on his funky Verve project "A Go Go," chances are you were shaking something.

MMW's history began in the early 1990s in New York City's downtown music scene. They were originally formed as an acoustic trio, and their 1992 independent debut, "Notes from the Underground," garnered enough buzz to get them noticed by the Gramavision label (before it became a Ryko imprint), which subsequently signed the band and distributed 1993's "It's a Jungle in Here" and, later, "Shack-man." In 1998, MMW signed with the Blue Note jazz label, which released the critically acclaimed "Combustication," featuring turntablist DJ Logic.

The turntable would prove to have a significant impact on the group, as drummer Billy Martin recently released a limited-edition breakbeat album, "illy B Eats Volume 1: Groove, Bang and Jive Around" on his own Amulet Records. The record, produced by Scotty Hard (MMW, Wu-Tang Clan, Jungle Brothers) features Martin's groove and percussion samples, offered for DJ use.

Martin spoke with liveDaily correspondent Don Zulaica about MMW and his solo work.

LiveDaily: You're on a quick tour break now, right?

Billy Martin: Yeah, we're kind of lightening up a little bit this summer. It isn't too intense as far as touring goes. We have some fly-out gigs and three-day weekends. But we just came off a tour of mostly the West Coast, and Texas, New Orleans and Montana. We're basically getting ready to record in a studio ... in our studio.

Named Shacklyn.

Yeah, in Brooklyn. We did "The Dropper" there. It's our studio/rehearsal space. We have an old board and an old 16-track tape machine. "The Dropper" was the first thing we did there, while we were building the studio. Now we're ready to go in again.

How do you think having your own studio affected "The Dropper," as opposed to previous albums?

I think having our own space without worrying about ...

The clock?

Yeah, and stepping on anybody's toes, the budget and all that. And also having every instrument at our fingertips [was important], because that's where everything is kept. We have a lot more in our studio than we could ever bring into other studios. So all those factors tie in. And having the time to leave it for a month, go on the road, come back and pick up where we left off. Listen to stuff casually. One or two of us could go in and do something, listen, and we could get something good out of that. That kind of freedom, I think, has a really good effect on how we write.

I also think that, where we're at, we were ready to do something like "The Dropper," even if we were in another studio. We probably would have gone in a direction where it was kind of avant-groove, a lot of different directions. But still, the studio had a big influence. It's our space, our solitude, our club--we hang out together. No distractions.

The "illy B Eats Volume 1: Groove, Band and Jive Around" project, this was inspired by DJ Logic, right?

Yeah. Logic was touring with MMW after we did "Combustication" (1998), and he told me I should do a breakbeat record. During a soundcheck, he said, "Man, you've got so many beats, you should do a breakbeat record." And I was like, "What's a breakbeat record?" And he said, "It's drum beats that DJs use to mix and make music with." And I said, "Oh yeah. Well I'm not really into that idea right now. I'm more into creative, not just groove stuff," you know?

But I finally got around to it now--I was in the mood to do it. So I went into Shacklyn and recorded a bunch of drum tracks. Scott Harding [a.k.a. Scotty Hard] produced it. He works with Logic and Wu-Tang, and hip-hop and jazz people. And we worked well together, this is going to be the first in a series.

The hip thing about this record is that I'm inviting people to collaborate with me, using my beats and playing parts over it, and sending me a copy, and maybe getting together in the studio. Or sending a complete mix of their own. This could be a musician, an instrumentalist, a rapper, a songwriter, a DJ. I'm going to release a compilation record of what I think is the best that I get. It'll probably come out next spring. I’m really excited about it, because I'm already getting responses. Logic is going to do one, John Scofield is going to do one. Steve Cannon, a writer who did a spoken-word piece on "Combustication" called "Whatever Happened to Gus," wrote a book called "Groove, Bang and Jive Around," which is the subtitle of the breakbeat record--he might read something from his book.

From a playing perspective, how has your musicianship evolved over the years? Has there been a steady progression in your and the band's abilities, improvisationally or otherwise?

Oh yeah, everything. We're growing together. We're learning a lot about how to work with each other, still. When we play together, it's like a conversation, so I think that that kind of dynamic is something that--we're always learning. You know, "When is the right time to say something?" We're communicating and listening to each other. I think as we mature, you listen more and play less. And when you play, you try to say as much as you can with few words.

Of course there are exceptions to that. Sometimes you want a wall of sound, you want some kind of effect like that. But in general, we're all trying to balance each other out. And that's evolved with the recording techniques, with our input in the studio, live. We've grown a lot, personally as well as technically. But we're still the same people. We're down to earth, and love what we're doing. It's like a family, or a relationship, just growing together. ... We have that with each other, personally, and also with the music. You know, we have a really good thing.