(Brainfeeder)Mood and mode fluctuate wildly on an album that finds the jazz virtuoso meditating on the death of a close friend
Few virtuoso jazz bassists could a spend a decade in a legendary thrash punk band and then swap all the shredding to tour with Snoop Dogg, purveyor of languid west coast hip-hop. It’s a rare musician, too, who can combine writing songs for his cat, Tron, with picking up a Grammy for their sterling work with Kendrick Lamar, the finest rapper of his generation.
This is a really narrow field of one, occupied by 35-year-old Los Angelean Stephen “Thundercat” Bruner, freak-funk polymath, anime obsessive, heir of sorts to the spacey Afro-futurism of George Clinton, a man who “may be covered in cat hair”, as he sings on Dragonball Durag, one playful single off his fourth album, but “still smells good”. The song’s video sees Haim, R&B singer Kali Uchis and the US comedian Quinta Brunson turning the deluded Bruner down, despite his fetching bandana (the titular “durag”), manga shorts and signature leopard-print ear muffs.