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Label

Brainfeeder

Thundercat

Golden Age of Apocalypse

Flying Lotus and Thundercat make jazz music. The scales tell the whole story. This isn’t a bad thing, because jazz with a vitality that folks can appreciate — well it’s been a very very long time since that has happened in this country. Not since smooth jazz corrupted the world of music with it’s banal and vanilla lack in the 80s has contemporary jazz been this widely accepted in American pop culture. Like their contemporaries in other genres (Animal Collective, Jel, Madlib) Flying Lotus and Thundercat’s approach to music-making is decidedly marked by the studio itself — something not common in jazz save Teo Macero’s roll in Bitches Brew (I’m sure there are other examples, but I can’t think of any off of the top of my head). The Golden Age of Apocalypse has stronger roots in David Sancious, Bela Fleck, or Weather Report than it does in James Brown, Wu-Tang, or Kraftwerk. They’re using the tools that the kids are using these days, but they’re making tunes that the kids tend to shy away from.

While no less moving this music is much more conservative, being that it has strong ties to a markedly documented, and pedagogically resolute method of playing. And I think this distinction is a crucial one because these guys are moving in ways that aren’t synonymous with most other folks. They’re picking up a tradition that was set down a long time ago. As much as many hip hop folks may have made “jazzy” music over the years, it has never engaged the jazz canon, and run through its planes quite like this. Add to that the fact that they have picked up jazz precisely where it left off, and what they’re doing has a context that is well beyond the stream of new records slated for this fiscal quarter. Thundercat and Flying Lotus are influenced by jazz in a way that the majority of their contemporaries are not. It’s just a slight variation on what tons of other people are doing, but this particular distinction makes all the difference.

I struggle with records like this because I like repetition of phrases, and this record is all about motion, and flux. They take a very familiar impetus that is common amongst all of us making music today, but instead of merely delivering their jazz-styled take on current pop music Flying Lotus and Thundercat tie the contemporary impetus into one of this country’s oldest and richest musical traditions. A lot of people will use adjectives like swirling, and vibrating to talk about this music. But, I’d say it runs a very straight course, in fact if you know how to listen it moves in very predictable ways for the most part. That’s one of the things that defines jazz. It moves in a predictable, regimented fashion, but it does so with a distinct kind of perfectly tuned precision, and a kind of grace and style that is only born of playing jazz music. These guys are out on a wild fucking limb in the midst of an otherwise tame jungle of confusion. Good work dudes (especially the Scooby-sounding song, the anvils were clutch).

Bonus: I think it would be dope if these guys did a record with David Haynes.