It’s been something of a landmark year for the progressive jazz/funk/electronic collective that makes up the Brainfeeder Records roster. From Flying Lotus’s beloved 2014 release You’re Dead to Kamasi Washington’s recent album The Epic—a straightforward jazz album on a label mostly beloved by electronic music fans—to Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly, which featured contributions from both FlyLo and Kamasi Washington, the Brainfeeder collective has been straight up rewriting the musical zeitgeist in their image. Their take on jazz sounds is literally making jazz cool again. Key to that process is Thundercat, a reliable collaborator on all three aforementioned projects and an accomplished solo artist in his own right.
Although he’s been busy, Thundercat hasn’t released music under his own name since 2013’s The Apocalypse. But that’s all changing right now. He’s just announced a six-song mini-album on Brainfeeder called The Beyond / Where the Giants Roam and shared the first single, “Them Changes.” It’s a beautiful, smooth track about lost love drenched in the sounds of classic funk that finds Thundercat tearing it up on bass and crooning incredibly real lyrics like “nobody move there’s blood on the floor, and I can’t find my heart.” “Somebody tell me how I’m supposed to feel,” he continues, hitting on the weird alienation a breakup entails.
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If you’ve been holding out on this whole Brainfeeder thing, this is your moment to get on board. “Them Changes” is produced by Flying Lotus and features Kamasi Washington on saxophone, as well as Dennis Hamm on piano, so the whole crew is here. Both FlyLo and Washington appear throughout the project, which also features Miguel Atwood-Ferguson, Mono/Poly, and, crazily enough, Herbie Hancock on keyboards for “Lone Wolf & Cub.”
The Beyond / Where the Giants Roam is out Monday—yes, this coming Monday—June 22 on Brainfeeder. Check out the full tracklist below, but first listen to “Them Changes” and let its soothing aura wash over you and make some changes in your own life:
The Beyond / Where the Giants Roam tracklist:
1. Hard Times
2. Song for the Dead
3. Them Changes
4. Lone Wolf and Cub
5. That Moment
6. Where the Giants Roam / Field of the Nephilim
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