Album review: Thundercat’s ‘The Beyond / Where the Giants Roam’ is jazz nectar

Earlier this year, Kendrick Lamar released “To Pimp a Butterfly,” which has proven to be one of the most universally highly praised albums of 2015 so far. At its creative core, this album featured the talents of a host of producers and musicians, including Flying Lotus, Dr. Dre, Pharrell Williams, and an outrageously talented bassist, singer, producer and session musician from L.A named Stephen Bruner—better known as “Thundercat.”

Best categorized vaguely as “fusion,” Thundercat mixes electronica, jazz, and rhythm and blues influences. He comes from a musical family. Ronald Bruner, Sr., his father, was a session drummer who recorded with household acts like The Temptations and Diana Ross, and he and his Grammy-winning brother, Ronald Jr., were both members of Young Jazz Giants. He’s calling “The Beyond / Where the Giants Roam” a “mini-album,” whereas most would simply refer to it as an EP. It’s true that a CD-R will hold about 80 minutes of music, but Thundercat has opted to pack at least 80 minutes worth of music—arguably more than that—into about 16 minutes.

For a jazz offering, however, “The Beyond / Where the Giants Roam’” is even more deep and vivid than expected. His previous album, “Apocalypse,” came close after the passing of Austin Peralta, a close friend and collaborator. Almost an epilogue to that album, the narrative that Thundercat weaves throughout this EP never fully departs from Hannah Barbara-flavored mythological metaphor, making it like a 15-minute jazz short story about loss and loneliness.

“Hard Times” functions as a sort of invocation. Sung in a comfortable falsetto accompanied by tall bass chords (that don’t sound like bass), he refers to the sepulchral Mumm-Ra the Ever-living, an oblique nod to his namesake, while narrating waking up somewhat disoriented in a tomb, shedding his skin, moving beyond the trappings of decaying flesh, and imploring God for “sight beyond sight.”

Fittingly, the “Song for the Dead” follows. Again, while there is percussion, it’s largely virtuoso bass playing that backs up his own voice, which he stacks in up to five parts—at one point, in a perfectly intoned, five-notes-thick tone cluster. But virtuosity aside, it’s the lyricism that is most striking, which suits the narrative of finding one’s way home.

“Them Changes” follows, which is your reason for having ears and feet this summer. Like Stevie Wonder with Jaco Pastorius’ hands, Thundercat works a wah pedal with a supernatural touch (or is using some drippingly sick patch), layering contrapuntal lines with the same precise delicacy as Bowie did in “Fame.” Piano and more expert vocal overdubbing flesh out this dark funk tune, in which he is a “heartless, broken mess”: “Nobody move there’s blood on the floor / And I can’t find my heart.”

Arpeggios flow from Thundercat’s bass at the outset of “Lone Wolf and Cub.” While there’s some interspecies metaphor-mixing going on here, the theme is still a solitary aimlessness. After a period of some sidewinding modulation via an octatonic scale (with minimal harmonic clashing that, considering this guy’s chops, one assumes is intentional), the tempo shoots up for some serious finger work as dueling arpeggios fly as if to evoke a hasty flight.

“That Moment” is a ghostly, fleeting 43 seconds, during which ominous bass tremolos flutter over amid the sounds of insect life and Thundercat’s wordless crooning. Four plucked harmonic notes signal an end, like church bells pealing.

“Where Giants Roam / Field of the Nephilim” begins immediately sounding like an old Yellowjackets tune remixed by M83 for some fictional “best of the ‘80s” pop compilation, with dissonant, ethereal harmonies reminiscent of a late ‘80s video game soundtrack by Nobuo Uematsu overlaid by sparse but blindingly rapid bass runs a la Victor Wooten. In sequential context, it feels like a jazz parallel to the final movement of Holst’s orchestral suite “The Planets” and the arrival at some afterlife is clear. (And yes, that is Herbie Hancock you hear playing a Fender Rhodes.)

If big things come in small packages, Thundercat’s “The Beyond / Where the Giants Roam” holds about as much musical force as a uranium nucleus does atomic force. The guy is ridiculous. This unforgettable EP is a must-have for anyone who cares about serious music.