Flying Lotus
Until The Quiet Comes

If you give birth to a masterpiece, you must account for it, for better or worse. You reach the peak, you are able to have a direct vision of the sun. But the sun blinds: basking in its contemplation can truly harm. That pupil that allowed you to seize that spark, that brilliant intuition, can be compromised forever. This is true in almost every field. You have to choose whether to continue being a caricature of yourself or fall into the misunderstood category. You can try to experiment, to find a thousand detours, but you know that what you have released into the public domain will be able to reach you everywhere. A bit like the "colombre" in Buzzati. Any puddle could bring you back to the high seas. That is, about Flying Lotus and the post-Cosmogramma.

How to move forward after that monumental work? From various quarters, various opinions have piled up: for some, a simple replica of that sound that made him famous was to be expected, for others FlyLo would experiment in other fields to escape a miserable homogenization. Then this summer the mystery was revealed: “See thru to U” (with the voice of Erykah Badu), anticipating the album, unveiled some of the cards that Flying Lotus had put on the table.

A departure, at first impact, truly huge compared to the tone of Cosmogramma. But like magic, progressively, everything moves to rediscover the order and classic sound of the American producer. Indeed, it is so (although it must be said that this single stands apart a bit from the rest of the album). This new work photographs FlyLo's style from a different perspective, it simply captures an unusual pose. This makes the discourse, in its reshaping, sound familiar after all. Even the opening of the album (“All in” and “Getting there”), in its breaking the soft atmospheres we were used to, fits into the logic of what we had left unresolved two years earlier. The traces of glitch scattered in these tracks, in the end, become one with the poetics of this Los Angeles musician. By crafting a work of certain depth, Steven Ellison dispels any doubt. He doesn't dive headlong into overturning what was previously said, nor is he content to recite a sermon learned by heart. He simply gives a different stamp to his compositional skill. Following this new view, the atmosphere of the album becomes almost hypnagogic. Many have seen this as the most jazz work of his production (always flaunting his blood tie with John Coltrane). In reality, as always, Flying Lotus enjoys making different schemes and registers interact with each other: you can find a tribal percussive base in “Electric Candyman” (with vocal loops by Thom Yorke), as well as an almost Indian-like cadence in “Hunger” (here with Niki Randa on vocals). Certainly, there is plenty of jazz to be found (“Only if you Wanna” shows it with great class), but it would be in precarious balance without the usual soul tones, rhythms between downtempo and breakbeat, the thousand references to the most inspired techno, the funky and R&B sparks.

Steven Ellison inevitably employs techniques he had already showcased in the past: vocal counterpoints inserted here and there (“DMT Song” enriched by Thundercat or more subtly in “All the Secrets”), irregular rhythmic bases (“Phantasm” with the delicate voice of Laura Darlington) and modulation work in the construction of harmonics (“Putty Boy Strut”). All this serves, on this occasion, to outline the 18 vignettes that FlyLo claims should recreate states and situations linked to the subconscious. Indeed, the theme of the album draws heavily from the dream sphere. In fact, as in the dream world, in many episodes the changes in register become quite sudden and do not appear to follow a precise logic (see “The Nightcaller”). In this regard, to give the impression of an illogical and subconscious-linked scenario, FlyLo worked a lot on the juxtaposition of consonant and dissonant sounds, on uneven and appropriately broken times. In this way, character and definition are given to the idea of a dreamlike world, lurking beneath the curtain of a prevailing logicism. It even seeks, in some episodes, a sound that brushes the threshold of atonality.

This, and really very much more, is enclosed in this new release under the name Flying Lotus. Following an analysis of the various tracks you will notice how each individual piece hides a world of plots and stylistic solutions that would delight any exegete. An album that offers something unexpected with every new listen. Certainly among the best releases that 2012 has gifted us.