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Thundercat


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Afternoon all,

Anyone else catch Thundercat on the 6 Music Festival highlights programme Sunday night?

I admit I'd never heard of him but I was blown away. I sat there tapping my foot with my biggest, smuggest bass face ever.

Who else haven't I heard of who I should have?!

Please, if you haven't seen or heard of him have a watch, 42 mins in...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b08kvtrw/the-6-music-festival-2017-highlights

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Try Flying Lotus, he and Thundercat collaborate a fair bit, Lotus produces a lot of Thundercat's stuff and Thundercat plays and sings on quite a lot of Flying Lotus stuff.

It's difficult to describe Flying Lotus' music but it's sort of electronic/ dance/ hip hop/ jazz.

http://youtu.be/2lXD0vv-ds8

http://youtu.be/2uCyv05SG1g

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I posted about Thundercat here a while ago and got shouted down by some old people who thought he was crap. Gotta love those ageing 'baby boomers' and their distrust of anything that's less than 65 years old..

Thundercat is a one-off, he is a legit virtuoso but he also appeals to a whole other demographic who are into electronic music etc. We need many more like him if we want the electric bass to have a role in music in the future. When people talk about the value of old instruments, it's easy to forget that those old Fenders are only valuable because they link to an era of music that had a big impact on people. Without lots of new guys like Thundercat, the bass will fade into insignificance very quickly. So in terms of electric bass he is more important than many people think.

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[quote name='project_c' timestamp='1490782484' post='3267874']
I posted about Thundercat here a while ago and got shouted down by some old people who thought he was crap. Gotta love those ageing 'baby boomers' and their distrust of anything that's less than 65 years old..

Thundercat is a one-off, he is a legit virtuoso but he also appeals to a whole other demographic who are into electronic music etc. We need many more like him if we want the electric bass to have a role in music in the future. When people talk about the value of old instruments, it's easy to forget that those old Fenders are only valuable because they link to an era of music that had a big impact on people. Without lots of new guys like Thundercat, the bass will fade into insignificance very quickly. So in terms of electric bass he is more important than many people think.
[/quote]

He is a fantastic player, even if the music isn't your bag not sure why anyone would deny that.

Sometimes I have trouble telling what is bass and what is synth/drum machine, very original sound.

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Discovered this guy two days ago, instantly hooked - of course I found out that he played a show in London the same night and it happened to be sold out. Damn. His contributions were my favorite part of TPAB by Kendrick, so to find whole albums worth of that music is so satisfying.

That giant Artcore looks so uncomfortable though.

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[quote name='project_c' timestamp='1490782484' post='3267874']
I posted about Thundercat here a while ago and got shouted down by some old people who thought he was crap. Gotta love those ageing 'baby boomers' and their distrust of anything that's less than 65 years old..

Thundercat is a one-off, he is a legit virtuoso but he also appeals to a whole other demographic who are into electronic music etc. We need many more like him if we want the electric bass to have a role in music in the future. When people talk about the value of old instruments, it's easy to forget that those old Fenders are only valuable because they link to an era of music that had a big impact on people. Without lots of new guys like Thundercat, the bass will fade into insignificance very quickly. So in terms of electric bass he is more important than many people think.
[/quote]

Watched him on the catchup last night...virtuoso playing, but his voice just isn't strong enough to lead IMHO. While he clearly doesn't struggle multitasking both, who knows how much more he might do not having to sing...

Not sure electric bass is as doomed as you might suggest, though...gotta love these 'millennials' and their dismissal of anything over 20 years old... :D

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[quote name='Muzz' timestamp='1490794976' post='3268073']


Watched him on the catchup last night...virtuoso playing, but his voice just isn't strong enough to lead IMHO. While he clearly doesn't struggle multitasking both, who knows how much more he might do not having to sing...

Not sure electric bass is as doomed as you might suggest, though...gotta love these 'millennials' and their dismissal of anything over 20 years old... :D
[/quote]

Less of the millennial! I'm 43 and play jazz on a p-bass with dead strings :) but I hope you're right, i do spend a lot of time amongst people in their early 20s (I teach at a university) and there's less of them forming bands or playing instruments every year. I know that's down to a number of things but they don't have many people of their own generation that have take ownership of the bass and are doing interesting things with it. I'm not a giant Thundercat fan but I do think he manages to be a legit bassist and still play fresh music which your average festival-going pill-popping hipster millennial can relate to.

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OK, I withdraw the Millennial thing unreservedly...what was there between Baby Boomers and Millennials? Is it Generation X? I lost track a while ago...anyway...

While I agree there isn't the 'everyone's in a band' thing there was a few years (erm, decades :unsure: ) back, I play with a number of deps (and so my FB is full of them and their friends/band members), and they're all under 25, and lots of them are very committed. Some of them are even bassists :) I go to jam nights quite often around the North West, and again, while they're not exactly brimming with musicians of Thundercat's calibre or leanings, they're also not exclusively havens for the over-60s playing All Along The Frickin Watchtower*, either...there's a lot of younger musicians out there, too...and they're most of them better than me... :unsure: :)

Actually, thinking back, the vast majority of all those dozens of wannabe stars who were learning and gigging around me when I was growing up had packed it in by the time they were 25 anyway - the ones with the real talent kept going, and hopefully that might still be the case.


* Original title, changed by Dylan after he went electric...

Edited by Muzz
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Yeah if you're in your early to mid 40's now I think that's Gen X, but I'm not sure where the boundaries actually are. But that's good to hear anyway, long may it continue. Let's hope some of them become massive music legends and turn bass playing into something that's relevant to their generation.

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I enjoy him when I've heard him on 6 music, though does anyone else find there is quite a retro feel about his stuff? The performance above almost reminds me of something from one of the solo Stanley Clarke records like [i]Journey to Love, [/i]perhaps with a touch of Return to Forever about the keyboard solo. This is no bad thing of course, and he's taking that aesthetic to new places, it's just interesting to hear something new which draws on those particular sources.

Edited by Beer of the Bass
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[quote name='Thunderbird' timestamp='1490941586' post='3269147']
...I thought it was about the Thundercats cartoon I loved that when I was a kid and still do lol
[/quote]

You say that... and I too loved Thundercats as a kid... but I watched an episode recently for nostalgia's sake and found it to be terribly 'preachy' - like, moral advice being rammed down throats at every opportunity. I don't remember it being like that as a kid. Which probably explains why I turned out the way I did B)

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[quote name='project_c' timestamp='1490834114' post='3268449']
I hope you're right, i do spend a lot of time amongst people in their early 20s (I teach at a university) and there's less of them forming bands or playing instruments every year.
[/quote]

It moves in cycles. At some point, the next Oasis or Nirvana (whether we like them or not) will come crashing out of the blandness, and there'll be a bump in kids picking up guitars and basses.

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[quote name='wateroftyne' timestamp='1490951366' post='3269277']


It moves in cycles. At some point, the next Oasis or Nirvana (whether we like them or not) will come crashing out of the blandness, and there'll be a bump in kids picking up guitars and basses.
[/quote]

Well, there's a lot of talk at the moment about how the current state of politics is responsible for a rise in anger fuelled protest music, and whenever that's happened, we ended up with some new musical movements. So yeah maybe the current carcrash that is global politics will inspire some musical creativity.

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[quote name='project_c' timestamp='1490782484' post='3267874']
I posted about Thundercat here a while ago and got shouted down by some old people who thought he was crap. Gotta love those ageing 'baby boomers' and their distrust of anything that's less than 65 years old.. [/quote]

64, Agreed ,to an extent.

However I'm not personally going to let younger guys define bass players for me.

Blue

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[quote name='blue' timestamp='1491000074' post='3269842']


64, Agreed ,to an extent.

However I'm not personally going to let younger guys define bass players for me.

Blue
[/quote]

That's ok, your generation had its' bass heroes, which the old guys of your youth also didn't get. Allow young people to have their own heroes, and get comfortable with the fact that just because you don't get it, it doesn't mean it's crap, it just means you're not the target audience.

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[quote name='project_c' timestamp='1491007505' post='3269867']


That's ok, your generation had its' bass heroes, which the old guys of your youth also didn't get. Allow young people to have their own heroes, and get comfortable with the fact that just because you don't get it, it doesn't mean it's crap, it just means you're not the target audience.
[/quote]

Definitely not crap. Definitely don't get it, sounds like guitar playing to me. And I definitely can't play or sing at that level and never will. Not many have his ability.

My generation, we set the bass player bench mark so high with our heroes, it's hard for us older guys to give these new virtuosos a chance.

Now, with that being said, this young guy named Henrik Linder with Dirty Loops, I'm a big fan.

Blue

Edited by blue
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