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General Info Members: Steve Ellison Biography: Flying Lotus is the mind-bending solo project of iconoclastic LA producer Steve Ellison. To say his productions are “retro-futurist” might be a little on the nose, but they do possess a distinctly fusion-nerd-meets-transhumanist-savant bent, and his current “Layer3” live production supports it. Many may be familiar with him though his singular curatorial sensibilities as the man behind Brainfeeder, the LA label that’s home to such kindred spirits as Thundercat, Daedalus, the Gaslamp Killer or Taylor McFerrin. He has an ear for the sublime, yet subversive, and it may be thanks to his royal lineage: his great aunt and uncle are Alice and John Coltrane.
Major Discography: Flying Lotus’s most recent work is You’re Dead!, an often jarring collage of ‘80s jazz fusion excess, ethereal noise and spoken word funk-outs that invoke Gill-Scott Heron piloting the Arkestra. It’s not quite his opus, because that title may have already been claimed by the soaring, slightly more coherent beauty of Cosmogramma. There are other faces to FlyLo, namely his take-it-or-leave-it rap persona Captain Murphy. So say that aspect of his music (and his live show) is divisive might be an understatement.
Sounds Like Genre: Electronic without qualifier. Similar Artists: George Duke, J Dilla, Prefuse 73, Neil deGrasse Tyson Similar Bonnaroo Artists: None
Suggested Listening For FlyLo newbies, it might be a bit labor intensive to go and try to dive into his catalog in hopes of going into his set with any certain degree of familiarity. They’re capricious and oblique, and you’re probably doing to be too dazzled by his live production to really appreciate and digest how he approaches his mixes.
That said, You’re Dead! is the obvious place to start to know where he’s at right now, but Cosmogramma is the one that you just want to soak in. For a primer on his outside tastes, which always find a way inside his set by way of samples and deconstructions, check out his Lovers Melt mixtape series (the third one is my personal favorite). It’s baby makin’ music, but really, so is FlyLo.
Live Show Layer3. Wow. Such overwhelm. So dimensional. I first caught the Layer3 show still sort of in its infancy when he brought it to Moogfest 2014. I was a credentialed photog and there was an embargo on shooting, but I got my camera in anyway. I wasn’t even ready for what I saw and there’s really no way still can capture what’s happening. If anyone saw Amon Tobin’s 3D show a few years ago, this is the lovechild of that and the doc series “The Universe”. Just astounding.
Since then, he’s added new elements, including glowing eyepieces that make him look like David Lo Pan during his spirit plane battle with Egg Shen. I went to his Carrboro, NC stop back in October in hopes of catching that miracle one more time, but he announced right from the jump that the stage was too small for Layer3, though he was going to make up for it. That surprise was bringing on Thundercat and his band for nearly the entirety of his set.
Personal Notes Just go see it. It should be your first priority regardless of whom he is up against.
