I’ll never forget the time when a close friend of mine explained why he chose to play bass over seemingly far more prominent instruments: “Everyone assumes that a band can’t survive without a good guitarist or a good drummer or a killer vocalist, but everyone tends to override the value of a great bassist. People think that if you can play some basic walking line or the root note for every changing chord, that’s all you really need. Those people don’t really know how important bass composition really is. For example, listen to a song, any song (we turned on some old Incubus tune). As a cohesive unit, it sounds great. Now remove the guitar; it still sounds okay. Now take away the drums; we’re still good. Now remove the bass… there’s clearly something missing. The drums don’t sound as tight, the guitar is a few notes away from being completely lost, overall the sound is just lacking drive and substance.” It was truly eye opening. Bass is probably the most important component of any tune, regardless of genre. It adds fullness to the sound and ties the rest of the band together by providing a necessary “root”.

But do the same phenomena apply when bass becomes the focal point of a track? Not necessarily; in fact, a band doesn’t even seem necessary. Take the bass great Jaco Pastorius; his work with Weather Report really exemplifies his awesomeness. He singlehandedly could dominate any one track; all the other instruments could simply fade out and you probably wouldn’t even notice because his playing was so intense and mesmerizing.

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Jaco Pastorius- Teen Town

On Thundercat‘s new masterpiece, The Golden Age of Apocalypse, Stephen Bruner knows how important the bass is as an essential instrument and exploits its novelty. As a result, he takes after the greats and mimics Jaco’s style – merging jazz, funk, and blues – but adds the bonus of sometimes soloing into oblivion. You get lost in his creativity to the point that if the backing instrumentals disappeared, you’d still be entranced. Grab this album and hold on tight.

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Thundercat- Fleer Ultra

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Thundercat- Is It Love?

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Thundercat- For Love I Come

Purchase Thundercat‘s album The Golden Age of Apocalypse now on iTunes.