Flying Lotus, Cosmogramma, 5/6/10
When you are the great-nephew of Alice Coltrane, chances are music runs in your blood. Steven Ellison, aka Flying Lotus, has been making music for a while, just not where you’d think. He has done ad work for Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim programming and released a few albums but this record is cool in a whole new way. His expertise is experimental electronics, underground hip hop and some Indie type music and you can hear all of those influences right here.
With guests like Thom Yorke, Thundercat, Laura Darlington and his cousin Ravi Coltrane, this makes for some fun listening. There are a lot of samples, yet the music is upbeat and trance-like, you can dance to this and you can also listen to it while you do some work in your cubical. Moving through the tracks you can hear how free jazz, a concept used by John Coltrane, plays a key factor in a lot of this music. A song might start kind of strange but when it hits a peak and comes together, you have magic and before you know it the next track begins.
I picked this up the day it came out and realized I have several albums I should get a leg up on and review. Some of the best tracks on here have sampled vocals and driving rhythm that hits your nerves, I just wish this record was longer than 45 minutes, but you take what you can get.
Start with: ‘Clock Catcher’, ‘Nose Art’, ‘…And the World Laughs with You’, ‘Arkestry’, ‘Do the Astral Plane’ and the shout out to his great-aunt, ‘Drips/Auntie’s Harp’. This album is kind of hard to find, so try to borrow it if you can or pick one up when you have a chance, either way you won’t be disappointed.
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