Just now, Flying Lotus dropped a second preview track for next month’s long anticipated album, You’re Dead! The song is titled Coronus, The Terminator, and you can listen right here:
Flying Lotus
Flying Lotus – Tiny Tortures (video featuring Elijah Woods)
This arrived today and it is beautiful. Echoing Akira (and Tetsuo) and some of the brilliant, creepy videos from Aphex Twin, it’s a dark, cinematic corkscrew in psychedelic miniature. There are few videos so evocative of their namesake, working as a perfect thematic foil to the song. Now watch, as Elijah Wood has a fucked up night.
Despite the fact that I haven’t done a full “album post” about Flying Lotus‘ latest opus, Until The Quiet Comes is easily one of my biggest repeat listens of the year. It’s the living, breathing incarnation of what I’d always kind of hoped his work was pointing towards. Its growth from 2010’s Cosmogramma is more organic and inevitable than the sudden leap that album made from its predecessor, breathrough lp Los Angeles; naturally, it’s less surprising how radically good this is. I feel like I took it for granted at first: “Of course this is good. Well there it goes in my car to stay in rotation for weeks.” Only a handful of albums have spent so much time as regular, near-daily listen this year, and if it weren’t for Kendrick Lamar’s new release, I could have, possibly, worn it out.
Thankfully this video came along today. Not only my favorite track, Tiny Tortures was due for some recognition. On an album crowded with standout moments between sublime guest vocals and dizzying synth work, its sparkling meditative cascade can be mistaken as a gentle interlude. It’s more like a brief exposure of Quiet‘s spiritual heartbeat. It reaches transcendence in the emotive dance of its guitar and bass (by second time MVP Thundercat) over a pulse hinting at great-aunt Alice Coltrane’s organ work on one of her masterpieces. If you haven’t listened to the album yet, here’s your chance to embrace one of the warmest electronic albums in years, a possible masterpiece of jazz and electronic music.
Until The Quiet Comes Comes
Just because.
This has been out over a week and the leak for half that, but tonight, alone, listening to the proper stream on NPR, my excitement is reborn. There are details, sharp edges and vocal snapshots bursting out at me, entire stretches brimming with instrumentation I haven’t noticed. I listened to the leak ten times and haven’t heard the album like this. My thought confirmed: the vinyl leak is muffled, distant and compressed sounding. Everything’s in there, buried then rendered in high fidelity. I kept wanting to lean inward and focus on the elements I knew were inside. It’s a treat to know that what I’ll be receiving in a couple weeks is even better than what fans have been going nuts over.
Stream the entire album here:
Flying Lotus – Until The Quiet Comes
[NPR stream]
Thanks, NPR. Also a question: why can’t your player embed?
Also here is the video for first single Putty Boy Strut. Regardless of how you feel about this song, remember that with this man’s work, it’s all about context.
[Pre-order the album from Bleep, especially if you want the ridiculous collectors edition like I do.]
Flying Lotus – Cosmogramma
Flying Lotus has crafted a masterpiece. Cosmogramma is a state-of-emergency tidal wave of an album. This self-evident space opera is a rollicking behemoth, sweeping all imitators aside and redefining any and all notions of what this genre can be. This album is a clear step above everything else I’ve heard in 2010, and what I can only hope is a harbinger for the next decade of music evolution. Oh.. and it’s out today.
Infinitum
Those who know me know that I’ve got a certain itch that only Flying Lotus can scratch. But only two people know the significance this video holds for me.
In anticipation of his upcoming album Cosmogramma (out May 3, 2010 on Warp) I’ve decided to shine a light on one of my favorite artists working today, Steven Ellison aka Flying Lotus. To my ears, there isn’t a more exciting and promising career out there, with a body of work that speaks for itself and points to the future in every possible way. Listening to his 2008 masterpiece Los Angeles is to know exactly what heads mean when they say “next level shit.” He’s not only a step ahead of anyone else in the game, but appears to be having the most fun doing it.
This is to be the first in a series of posts leading up to the release of the album I’ve been jonesing for ever since my first bicycle ride with Los Angeles as the soundtrack. I felt it poetic to begin at the end of that album, with this mesmerizing lock-groove-driven number, sprinkled with achingly gorgeous vocals courtesy of Laura Darlington (Mrs. Daedelus and one half of The Long Lost, to those who care). Not only is the song a perfect set closer, but it’s accompanied by one of thoe most simply poetic and visually sumptuous videos I’ve seen in a long while. I’ll let you decide how you like it, but suffice to say it’s works like this which sustain my faith in the art form.
Keep your eyes on here for the latest updates and any tracks which may be dropped between now and May 3.
Optimistic Underground 