It’s been 14 years since rapper Del the Funky Homosapien, producer Dan the Automator and turntable guru Kid Koala combined forces to drop Deltron 3030, a futuristic concept album centering on Deltron Zero’s fight to keep corporations from ruling the world.
Why the wait?
“To tell you the truth, it wasn’t where my interest was for the last 10 or 12 years,” Del (aka Deltron Zero) recently told Under the Radar. “My interest wasn’t in sci-fi. My interest was in actual life. I just didn’t want to fantasize. I was trying to think real. It just took a while for me to really be in a comfortable enough place to sit back and fantasize about other worlds.”
The trio’s long-awaited return, simply dubbed Event 2, picks up where the self-titled debut left off, as actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt (one of many high-profile guests) tells us in an opening monologue about a society collapsing under the weight of economic despair.
That’s followed by “The Return,” which finds Del in typically dexterous mode, his singular delivery ebbing and flowing as he sets an apocalyptic scene (“Stardate 3040, warp speed to the new scenario/Where we roam, our tiny planet was continually shrouded in darkness”).
The chorus repeatedly informs us that, “It’s the return of Deltron Zero and Automator,” the latter of which supports the track with a languid, impressively textured string- and keyboard-laden soundscape.
It’s just the opening set piece in yet another funky, lushly produced concept record that’s often as humorous as it is dire in its possibly prophetic vision of the future.
DELTRON 3030 plays Bogart’s 8 p.m. Tuesday, July 1. Tickets/more info
here .
This article appears in Jun 18-24, 2014.
