The new musical mind-melt from the LA free spirit conjures cosmic bliss from jazz-funk fusions, bounding beats and electronic odysseys shot sky high and beyond. 2ser Subscribers can win a copy on Breakfast, Overdrive and Static.
Following an acclaimed tour of Australia in 2009, L.A’s Flying Lotus will release his new album ‘Cosmogramma’ this 30th April on Warp (Aphex Twin, Autechre, Battles, Hudson Mohawke) through Inertia. Blending Californian hip-hop beats and bass-heavy dubstep with surrealist jazz and kaleidoscopic IDM, Flying Lotus is one of the most prodigious talents to emerge in electronic music this decade.
Born Steven Ellison, the 26-year-old has a heritage of creativity and experimentation. His grandmother, Marilyn McLeod, wrote and produced popular songs for Motown (most famously, Diana Ross’ disco smash “Love Hangover”). His aunt, the harpist/pianist Alice Coltrane (wife of saxophone colossus, John Coltrane), created legendary compositions that remain bedrocks of the jazz avant-garde. “They never pressured me to make music,” Ellison says. “They didn’t really get what I was doing, even my aunt. She didn’t really follow [hip-hop], but she knew deep down that I was meant to make music.”
First breaking out in 2008 with his universally acclaimed debut, ‘Los Angeles’, Flying Lotus has garnered comparisons to everyone from Madlib and J. Dilla to Burial and Aphex Twin. Within months of its release, he was being commissioned for remixes by Kanye West and Radiohead, and his unique brand of “surrealist hip-hop” was being hailed as the sound of the future.
On ‘Cosmogramma’, however, Ellison defies simple categorisation. “It would have been so easy to just make a dubstep album,” he says. Instead he opened the doors to something more far-reaching and expressive; what he calls “my most honest work, just true to what I wanted to say.”
No longer simply an outgrowth of Ellison’s machines, the music on ‘Cosmogramma’ is also the product of live instrumental collaborations with Radiohead vocalist Thom Yorke, bassist Stephen “Thundercat” Bruner (Sa-Ra Creative Partners), harpist Rebekah Raff (collaborator with Ghostface Killah and Harry Partch), and saxophonist Ravi Coltrane.
