Well, probably not, but their brand new, completely free album sounds plucked from art-rap's golden age.

The just-launched 1000 Apes in a Room project finds longtime L.A. left-field rapper K-The-I??? (his 2008 LP Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow was produced by Low End Theory regular Thavius Beck) sharing both vocal and production duties with Silver Lake weirdist Michael Nhat.

While the former has a rough-hewn, deliberate vocal style that brings to mind CanOx star Vast Aire, Nhat's free-wheeling half-sung approach is firmly rooted in West Coast history — early WHY? material and the bulk of the Shapeshifters catalog (see Circus or Awol One).

All of this may mean very little for those who didn't doggedly follow every move that Def Jux, Anticon, and Mush Records made in the early aughts, so allow us to translate:

This is some totally effed-up, avant-garde rap shit that vacillates between hard poetry and loopy sing-song abstractions.

And if you like Busdriver (as we hope you do), you'll dig this.

Stream and download 1000 Apes in a Room is… for free via Bandcamp.

Non-album track, “House”:

1000 Apes in a Room live:

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