Deep in the afterfuture, when Armageddon has rendered the world a cold, dead place, the surviving few will yearn for a time before the cataclysm, when things were brighter and people knew how to party. And in order to quench that yearning, the people will turn to the Nostalgialator, a great machine on treads perhaps constructed from melted plastic soldiers that brings the sounds and sensations of the past to the huddled masses. Watch it, though: It occasionally snaps and sucks off history's sugarcoat to reveal what that time was really like. If I gather correctly, this is the general conceptual arc along which hip-hop's strangest operator, Mike Ladd, has designed his first three solo albums. It's almost as awesomely pretentious as his concurrent trilogy revolving around the struggles between the underground Infesticons and mainstream Majesticons.
Nostalgialator is constructed in two halves, the first stuffed with interstellar electrofunk for the party at the end of the universe, the second a downtempo chill session that presumably signals a malfunction in the titular machine. It groans to life with a collage of smooth beats, swelling crowd noise, coughing synths and barely intelligible shoutouts from the stage called "Dire Straits Play Nuremburg", and the air already feels charged with electricity. Ladd flexes every muscle he has over the next 40 minutes, Bollywood horns blasting at the corners, sound sweeping into great, kinetic waves as Ladd raps, croons, speaks like the mental offspring of Gil-Scott Heron, shouts, and cranks up his falsetto.
He works that odd, scratchy falsetto on the spacey R&B; single "Housewives at Play", mingling with the slinking synths and thumping beat and a De la Soul-ish breakdown that repeats itself into an echoing wah guitar figure that's positively out of this world. His background playing in punk bands comes to the fore on "Wild Out Day", a frenetic blast of Mumbai hardcore that kicks Minor Threat in the face with a cartoon horn break while Ladd loses his shit barking out the verses. The album flips in head-spinning fashion through British Invasion guitar breaks, organic drum explosions, crunching electro, and Ladd's slippery raps, the best of which might be "Black Orientalist", with its tumbling cadence, his viscous voice flirting with melody and teasing words into referential tangles to mince and mix Vietnam, colonialism, the war on terrorism, and black identity into a single, sweeping blur.
The album's second half flows with Ladd's stream of consciousness, as he waxes Gil-Scott on the title track in a swirling analog texture with a meditation on Ben Franklin and electricity: "He discarded letters and chess for fire from clouds/ Delving in the games of gods, basking in new decadence beyond women in Paris and the death of Indians/ Something supernatural/ The harnessing of energy." Ladd's knack for imagery is breathtaking, as he spreads Franklin, "thunderstruck junkie, fiend for sky crack," across history into the board room of ComEd and the wallet of the consumer dropping their check for the electric bill in the mail. The instrumental "How Electricity Really Works" takes this shift away from the first half's funkiness into extreme realms, mimicking 20th century classical music and ambivalent soundtrack music. But it's the closer, "Sail Away Ladies (Traditional)", that takes Ladd furthest from the man we know, as he croons in a milky baritone over a sort of sci-fi country & western backing.
By this point, the whole Nostalgialator concept has been swept clean aside by the wave of Ladd's 21st Century musical assault, and that's perfectly fine-- the last thing I'd want to hear him do is compromise his mastery of wordplay and sonic trickery in the name of advancing some arcane plot. As much as Ladd continually references the past, from Dr. Livingston and Picasso to Minor Threat, Funkadelic, and De La Soul, he moves the air with a beat that's entirely his own, the sum of too many parts to reflect any one too prominently, and his perceived role as a prankster on the sideline of hip-hop doesn't do his innovation or skill any justice. Nostalgialator closes the book on an epic cycle of three loosely linked albums, and I can't wait to see what crazy glue seeps out of Ladd's head to hold together the next series.
