Ras_G – Back on the Planet

Ras_G's first album for Brainfeeder since 2009's Brotha From Another Planet is a perfect, psychedelic hybrid of dusty LA beat-scene boom-bap and the cosmic jazz excursions of the Sun Ra Arkestra. One of the original talents behind the Low End Theory nights, and a core member of its spiritual predecessor Project Blowed, Ras_G is a stalwart of the LA scene, one of its founding fathers just as surely as Flying Lotus is.

Like FlyLo, his music is inspired as much by past epochs and movements as it is by modern technology and sample-craft, and this is very much in evidence in Back on the Planet. With snatches of vocals taken from soul, jazz, funk and black power movements both political and spiritual, the album manages to be both an abstract, off-the-wall excursion into sonic adventure, and a positive statement about African-American identities. For fans of Sun Ra, Funkadelic and FlyLo, this album will be an absolute revelation.