You can thank the DJ Shadows, the Keb Darges, and the other deep-funk connoisseurs for Pants. After thoroughly tapping the traditional funk reserves from the late '60s to mid-'70s, crate diggers forced themselves to reassess the late '70s and early '80s as a renaissance of funk. Synthesizers that were once vilified as cheap, synthetic substitutes for ivories, organs and horns were now appreciated as naïve explorations of the future. Formerly stigmatized drum machines were no longer seen as cheap replacements of funky drummers, but repositories of stone cold def beats. Now the setting is ripe for the generation bred upon this freshness. The time is right for Pants.