Flying Lotus (photo from the artist)

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Flying Lotus (photo from the artist)
Flying Lotus (photo from the artist)

Flying Lotus
Los Angeles
Warp
Street: 6.10
Flying Lotus = Dabrye + RZA + Portishead

While making a documentary in Paris about his musical relatives, a taxi driver asked Steven Ellison aka Flying Lotus if he and his crew were musicians. He slumped down in his seat, but great aunt Alice Coltrane spoke up: “Yeah, this guy, he’s a musician too; he thinks he’s a filmmaker, though”. After a few listens to Los Angeles (and all of his stellar work, for that matter), you notice that Ellison’s music is the perfect mix of both, the album title, his hometown, providing the thematic element (something you’ll really notice if you’ve ever spent time in L.A.) to this extraordinary hypercompressed, claustrophobic mélange of samples, broken rhythms and analog loveliness. You hear spooky, foggy nighttime Malibu surf (“Camel”), experience whiffs of Little India’s spices and rhythms (“Melt!”), see red carpet traffic jams (“Golden Diva”), pull down the wrong street at the wrong time (“Riot”) and drowsily smile like a tourist in La Brea (“Sleepy Dinosaur”). – Dave Madden

(This is a little late, but I had to mention it as his is about the only newish hip-hop I'm impressed with.)

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Taken on: July 11, 2008
Tags: Everybody's photos tagged with flying flying Everybody's photos tagged with lotus lotus
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