Now that mainstream hip-hop has gone jazz – witness Kendrick Lamar’s association with Thundercat, for one – the premise of this release by Seattle Afro-futurists Shabazz Palaces (one of two linked long-players) might not seem so out-there. Quazarz is an interstellar traveller, seriously unimpressed with how they do things in “Amurderca”. But even with the paradigm shift, Shabazz Palaces remain magnificently eccentric, enlisting Thundercat on Since CAYA, quoting Kraftwerk at length on the nagging Moon Whip Quäz. Tracks such as Dèesse Du Sang, meanwhile, provide a haunted analogue magic that is hard to shake off.
