Every review i've read about the new Thundercat album is that it sounds like Erykah Badu. Almost every review about this album is comparing this work to every genre (jazz/London broken beat/trip hop) and artist (Badu/Miles Davis/Mouse on Mars) that the writers are tripping over themselves flexing their skills in pinning down who this sounds like.
The truth is that The Golden Age of the Apocalypse sounds like robots playing soul music. That Sade type soul--the type of stuff that you may hear in certain places where older men and women try and meet and hook up. Thundercat (and Flying Lotus) produced a sound evoking robots playing soul music, just slightly too weird for old people meat markets.
And robots playing soul is certainly a better way to describe this than "fusion". It is a real talent to use electronics to make a human sound, and Thundercat seamlessly inter-weaves bass (both synth and Steve "Thundercat" Bruner's accomplished bass cred) and piano and drums to create something both very easy to listen to and very hard to hear. A song like "Fleer Ultra" is great because of it's unsettling feeling. Some of the notes don't fit, are a half step behind at times and it sounds like it's on the fritz. It is a perfect meld of jazz and something going wrong.
Golden Age gets really mellow at times as well with tracks like "It Really Doesn't Matter to You", where a livelier band setting plays the background role to Bruner's needling piano/synth. It really shows that Bruner, a former member of Suicidal Tendencies is a very creative force and musician.
While this album is pretty abstract, it's hard not to marvel at the cohesiveness of old '70s sound being ran through a futuristic filter. Bruner is ridiculously sharp, unleashing an album just on the edge of innovative. This may not be the easiest hit we've try to pass around at IYS, but for those who can handle the jolting genre blends, The Golden Age of the Apocalypse will deliver.
Track List
1. HooooooO
2. Daylight
3. Fleer Ultra
4. Is it Love
5. For Love I Come
6. It Really Doesn't Matter to You
7. Jamboree
8. Boat Cruise
9. Seasons
10. Goldenboy
11. Walkin
12. Mystery Machine (The Golden Age of the Apocalypse)
13. Return to the Journey
