The Nightwatchman | World Wide Rebel Songs

CD Reviews

Thundercat | The Golden Age of Apocalypse

Brainfeeder (2011)

By MICHAEL C. WALSH | August 31, 2011

4.0 Stars

If there was one knock against Flying Lotus's Cosmogramma LP, it was that it lacked a singular vision — consumed in traversing genres, mastermind Steven Ellison failed to craft any kind of narrative arc. Career session bassist Stephen Bruner, d/b/a Thundercat, lent his vocals to standout "MmmHmm" off that album and his instrumentation to a dozen or so other tracks. In an evident bout of reciprocity, Ellison has offered up his polished production hand to Golden Age. And oddly enough, despite the same roster of contributors, the end results are flipped — there's cohesion here, but the disc's sources of inspiration are hardly original. "For Love I Come," a transcendent take on George Duke's 1975 fusion burner, serves as the album's centerpiece and an entry point for fans of Flying Lotus to tap into the influences he has been preaching for years — Herbie Hancock and Roy Ayers serve as the other major mid-'70s jazz-funk reference points. A lot has been made recently of the new Los Angeles "beat scene," paved by the Brainfeeder collective and sourced through the late, ever-omniscient J Dilla and the ubiquity of dubstep. Golden Age, though part of the same family, sounds nothing like that. If anything, it's like someone beating on a cloud. Almost dreamlike in his flow, Thundercat totes us along by way of his agile bass-neck work, sly Rhodes riffs, and vocals that sound filtered through daisies and sunshine. The whole thing drifts, but never meanders off this hypnagogic course. And the curt, 37-minute runtime means the voyage is over before you realize that it really went anywhere. That's fine — the brevity only invites you to take the trip ad infinitum, at least until the less-than-golden apocalypse arrives.

Trans Am | What Day Is It Tonight? Trans Am Live, 1993 - 2008
Trans Am are distillers of guilty pleasures, mixing fat AOR riffs with sleazy electronic accents and a propulsive attitude typically reserved for arcade soundtracks. What Day Is It Tonight? covers the DC-area band’s 20-year history with high-quality, high-energy live cuts taken from their many tours.
Various Artists | Where the Action Is: Los Angeles Nuggets 1965 - 1968
More than three years in the making, the most recent installment of Rhino's legendary archival garage-rock series offers an amazingly comprehensive excavation of an absurdly fertile scene.
Various Artists | Nippon Girls: Japanese Pop, Beat & Bossa Nova 1966–1970
Girl-group records are great and everything, yet the countless compilations out there were becoming a little hit-or-miss until 2005, when the great Girl Group Sounds Lost and Found box set finally gave this diverse genre a proper taxonomy.
Various Artists | Casual Victim Pile: Austin 2010
The notion that regional musical flavors exist independently in American cities is quickly becoming an archaic truism, seeing as how the world really is a stage these days, at least in the digital sense.
Bearstronaut | Broken Handclaps
There's a distinct absence of wildlife or astronauts on Lowell electronica quartet Bearstronaut's latest release.
Flying Lotus | Cosmogramma
Only an experimental laptop artist whose music exists primarily for pensive white weedheads would purport his new album to be “basically the studies that map out the universe and the relations of heaven and hell.”
Avi Buffalo | Avi Buffalo
Look, I get it: the last thing we need right now is yet another band who can be described as “sun-baked,” “reverb-soaked,” or even just “psychedelic.” But Avi Buffalo (I know! An animal name to boot!) are worth your attention for a few reasons.
Review: Brandon Flowers | Flamingo
Brandon Flowers has gone on record saying he brought the songs on Flamingo to his fellow bandmates for the next Killers album and was given the brush-off.
Review: Kevin Dunn | No Great Lost: Songs 1979–1985
Casa Nueva Industries (2010)
Review: Crocodiles | Sleep Forever
With remarkable swiftness, Crocodiles tick off all the key characteristics of a band in the thriving lo-fi indie/punk/garage scene.
Review: Teengirl Fantasy | 7AM
If the demise of traditional record making is designed to foster any band’s fruitful existence, it’s that of Teengirl Fantasy.
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ARTICLES BY MICHAEL C. WALSH

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