Back On The Planet

Ras G’s *Back on the Planet* is a fractured, heady brew of chaotic psychedelia that deliberately pushes the boundaries of sample-based music. Ras G’s beats don’t merely play with conventions of rhythm and melody; they often discard them entirely. Distorted blasts of noise like “Asteroid Storm” and “CosMc Lounge Kisses” bear more resemblance to the freaked-out late-period works of free-jazz luminaries like Ornette Coleman and Sun Ra than anything in the hip-hop realm. Indeed, cosmic forefathers like Coleman, Ra, Afrika Bambaataa, and Eddie Gale are near-constant reference points for Ras G, who appears on *Back on the Planet*’s cover in full space-pharaoh regalia, clutching an ankh and gazing to the stars in a loving (but unsubtle) tribute to Sun Ra. But where Ra’s flirtations with noise, chaos, and complex personal cosmologies took place in the context of a wider musical palette that embraced everything from swing and big band music to modal jazz and disco, Ras G’s musical provocations sometimes feel unmoored from references that might lend greater depth to their fascinating sonic textures.

L.A. beatmaker Ras G is firmly in the tradition of the scene's most out-there producers. Back on the Planet is filled with soothing arrangements of gently pulsing drums, echo-blurred keys, and the occasional sub-bass boom.

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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

For his first release on Brainfeeder in over four years, Ras G charges into battle on a saddle-less horse, sporting a multi-function laser canon.