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"Flying Lotus is beautiful. This is a Flying Lotus album" "And it's free"
I like to start everything with a quote. Not having found an appropriate one, today I had to quote myself from two years ago when I was listening to stoner from morning till night, writing things I would then forget for the next twenty-six months. The basic concept remains the same: those who know the character in question will be convinced by that single line.
For those who want more, just know that Flying Lotus is a genius and one of the best hip hop producers of recent years, possibly the best. I say perhaps because, besides the existence of Madlib, FlyLo's music is purely instrumental hip hop mixed with a lot of those electronic things that are trending now and were trending in past years, for which there are no precise names and it's unclear what they mean. IDM, Wonky, Trap, Glitch Hop, Abstract/Jazz/Instrumental Hip Hop: I'll offer a coffee to anyone who can give me a clear and convincing definition of all these terms.
While planning the release of the new album, whose title, "You're Dead!", and October 2014 release date were announced just a few days ago, our friend decided to quietly and subtly gift another album to his fans. Thank you, internet for making even beautiful things possible. "Ideas+Drafts+Loops" is a compilation, but I challenge anyone to have heard most of this stuff before. And it's not second-rate stuff; the quality is indeed there, even if it obviously lacks the cohesiveness and the meticulous care that FlyLo puts into his real albums to create a unique thread from start to finish. However, this is not a mere Greatest Hits: in "Ideas+Drafts+Loops" we find twenty-four flailotic genius shards fished from who knows where. Besides the usual instrumental tracks, we have several collaborations, the rappers Shabazz Palaces and The Underachievers to name a couple, that fabulous Stonecutters that DJ Steven Ellison (that is, Flying Lotus himself) sends us over the radio on GTA V, Black Skinhead by Kanye "Gayfish" West redone with the help of the evergreen Thundercat and (they say) Yeezus himself. However, the probable gem of the album is Between Villains, a remake of the single Between Friends featuring high-caliber guests like Earl Sweatshirt, Viktor Vaughn (or MF DOOM, if you prefer), and Captain Murphy (i.e., FlyLo himself).
Flying Lotus fans who haven't listened to this album yet should do so immediately. Those who didn't understand anything from the string of quirky names I piled up in the previous paragraphs should also listen to it, as it's free and they won't feel guilty downloading it. I'll place the links here beside.
"Ideas+Drafts+Loops" is not a mystical experience, but it is still an album of great class.
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