Flying Lotus and Captain Murphy are the two alias of
Steven Ellison, music producer and rapper from Los Angeles, California.
Music has always been of great importance to Steven since
very young age; being the grandnephew of the jazz artists Alice Coltrane and husband John
Coltrane, Steven developed a very eclectic taste into the late 60’s and
early 70’s jazz scene. However, outside the family context, he lived into a
very prolific era for hip-hop and rap, not only in Los Angeles, but also all
over the US. If the Coltranes were his main inspiration for jazz, then James
Dewitt Yancey, better known as J Dilla
or Jay Dee, was certainly his main
source of inspiration for anything that was hip-hop. It is into this bipolar
interest into two different styles of music that we can trace the origins of Flying Lotus as a sort of pioneer of
what today is called: glitch-hop. Steven wanted to combine the smooth textures
and rhythms of the mid 90’s and early 2000’s hip-hop with the complexity and
moodiness of jazz and soul, using electronic music elements as a sort of glue
between these two genres.
Flying Lotus has
so far produced four albums, various EPs
and has appeared on several compilations with some of his unreleased tracks and
beats.
Thanks to the foundation of his own label, Brainfeeder, FlyLo has had the opportunity to create a new music movement and
culture, gathering many Los Angeles based artists into his music projects.
- Music background
-
As previously mentioned, Flying
Lotus’ music is the result of combining his great interest in jazz and soul
with his passion for hip-hop, which truly was the main reason for his involvement
in music.
 |
| J Dilla |
His great
inspiration though, J Dilla, was a
music producer from Detroit who emerged in the mid-late 90’s but that reached
his peak in the early 2000, before passing away in 2006 due to a cardiac
arrest.
Jay Dee had a
unique method of sampling and reworking funk and soul tracks, in ways that were
often ahead of his time. With the album “Donuts”
released by Dilla in 2006 merely
three days before his unfortunate death, this artist leaves behind a true
anthology that, even though may not be the best portrait of his music, it
certainly is a great last evidence of his ability in hip-hop instrumentals.
This album also features the track “Lightworks”,
a very unique and sophisticated rework of the homonymous track by Raymond Scott
that FlyLo also remixed in his “Shhh! EP” as a tribute to Dilla. The elements that Flying Lotus got from Jay Dee are surely a precise and
accurate ability in sampling, the experimentation of bizarre rhythms with
unusual sounds and most importantly, a solid hip-hop imprint. From Jay Dee, FlyLo also inherited a great love for soul and rhythm & blues, of
which we find common features in its productions.
On the other hand, due to his family relationship with Alice Coltrane and John Coltrane, Steven developed more and more interest in jazz and
avant-garde jazz.
Steven’s auntie, Alice
Coltrane, played piano, organ and last but not least harp, an instrument
that Flying Lotus has often used to
create his dreamy and delicate atmospheres. Mrs. Coltrane personal life was totally related to her career, so when
her husband died in 1967, she retired into the spiritual life of Indian gurus.
 |
| Alice Coltrane |
Last but not least is the source of inspiration for Captain Murphy, Steven’s rapper alias. A
project that was born roughly a year ago involving artists from Brainfeeder (such as Jeremiah Jae and Samiyam) and secretly keeping the identity of Captain Murphy till after the release, it represents a quite
futuristic and modern approach to rap.
Inspired by the dark and rough sound of artists such as Tyler the Creator, Jeremiah Jae and Madvillain,
Captain Murphy has surprised his
audience with his deep, slightly robotic voice and interesting flow with the
lyrics.
This project represents Steven’s intention to get closer to
the world of rap and hip-hop in which he grew up into and that inspired him so
much at the beginning of his career.
- The origins of
glitch-hop -
The name glitch-hop is the result of the combination of two
styles of music: glitch and hip-hop. Glitch is a genre born in Germany, developed
in the mid-90s and that, at the time, consisted in noises, crackles and errors,
combined with electro, industrial and lo-fi beats. Today, glitch is a genre
that seems to be influencing more and more styles of electronic music, even
those that are characterized by a clean and neat sound; like house music, techno
and hip-hop.
Even tough originated from hip-hop, glitch-hop introduces
substantial and important features to this genre.
Hip-hop on the other hand, started developing much earlier,
in the late 70’s. It is a genre that was initially born for dancing and for
clubbing purposes and was mainly based on funk and disco. The track “Rappers Daylight” by The Sugar Hill Gang released in 1979,
it’s a perfect example of what hip-hop initially sounded like. Although, once a
culture of rap and hip-hop started developing as a sort of mean to communicate
social issues and the street life, artists found inspiration in the vibes of
soul and rhythm & blues, to create a more intimate environment for their
lyrics. Even if originated from hip-hop, glitch-hop adds a few important
innovative elements to it.
Whilst hip-hop mostly keeps simple and clean structures and rhythms,
glitch-hop tends to be more rhythmically complex, dirty and experimental.
The rhythms are almost never perfectly synched, but often
with shifted claps or snares and counter beat kicks. Hip-hop is known for its
use of neat snares and claps to define the tempo, as the drums are essential to
keep a regular and precise beat in which the other instruments and the voice
can fit in. In glitch-hop, the drums are often off-synch but they fit within
the density of the instrumental in its whole. It would sometime take a few listen
of a given track to fully appreciate its musicality and complexity.
Voices also constitute another important difference: in hip-hop
they are often rapped or sampled, whilst in glitch-hop they are often used in
combination with huge reverbs and side-chained compressions to enlarge the
sound specter of the track. The lyrics themselves are also different in their meaning
and significance. Hip-hop often gets elements from funk and disco in both instrumental
features and lyrics, creating happier atmospheres and bright woody textures.
Glitch-hop rarely is inspired by funk and disco elements but is rather directed
towards soul hip-hop and jazzy vibes, developing a more introversive, “metallic” and moody vibe. Tempo and
rhythm also constitute an important difference. Whilst hip-hop is rhythmically
limited, because of its need to create a comfortable cadence for the rapper, glitch-hop
experiments all sorts of rhythms other that the classic 4/4, going from more
abstract and detached to more complex and chaotic.
However, it is also worth mentioning the influence of IDM
(Intelligent Dance Music) into Flying
Lotus’ work. As a style born in the early 90’s and with origins in the UK
and Japan, IDM represented all those artists that were not respecting the
canons and the structures of popular electronic music styles such as techno or
dance. Even though a lot of people, even artists, find the term “intelligent
music” a bit pretentious and demeaning towards other musicians and audience,
IDM massively influenced ambient and glitch, inspiring artists like Boards of Canada, Aphex Twin, Jon Hopkins
and many more.
Its sense of detachment from the world and its spacey
atmospheres created by the peculiar use of sound design, are typical features
of IDM that Flying Lotus uses constantly in its moody sound.
- The evolution of
Flying Lotus -
Throughout this next section, I will analyze the four Flying Lotus’ albums in their
chronological order, focusing on the elements that changed, developed and
evolved during FlyLo’s interpretation
of music.
- “1983” (2006)
This is not only his year of birth, but also Steven’s first
full-length album under the alias Flying
Lotus.
The first track represents the core of the album, as it is
the perfect introduction to what sort of sound FlyLo is presenting with this LP.
The song has a wonky hip-hop beat, moody and hypnotic “vocoder” synths and engaging changes of rhythms. The album
develops track-by-track keeping the listener into a dreamy but yet moving and
somehow shining environment. This is given by the ability of FlyLo to incorporate crispy, vivid and
sort of brutal drums within emotional and simple melodies obtained by chords or
subtle lo-fi distortions. This whole ensemble is glued together with glitches
and background noises that even though could be unpleasant to hear in another
context, fit very well in the ambience of the tracks.
Although, FlyLo
also presents us cleaner and swingy beats like “Sao Paulo”, which gives a sort of tribal vibe broken by the simple
synthesizers in the background.
Slightly detaching itself from the vibes of the ensemble of
the album is the track “Unexpected
Delight”, which features the voice of Laura
Darlington. This song wants to show us the more acoustic side of Flying Lotus and his ability to work
with voice and strings creating a jazzy, deep and soulful atmosphere. This LP led to the production of the “Reset EP”, one year after, featuring
the collaboration of the singer Andreya
Triana on the track “Tea Leaf Dancer”,
another great example of Flying Lotus’
love for soul but yet experimental and dark vibes.
- “Los Angeles” (2008)
Considered by many the album that put Flying Lotus on the map, this LP
takes the concepts developed in “1983”
to a new level of experimentation.
Because of its great impact on glitch-hop and electronic
music, this album gave birth to a series of three limited editions EP that gathered the best artists of the
genre to remix FlyLo’s productions.
Tracks such as “Camel”, “Golden Diva”
or “Roberta Flack” shortly set the standards
for glitch-hop as a well-defined genre. The album develops into a very mellow
and smooth selection that shifts the vibes from melancholic, airy and spacey to
messy, wonky and glitchy. Keeping the ethnic and tribal vibes of the first
album is the track “Melt!” which with
its clean and reverb percussions and jungle-like sounds and noises, truly seems
to transports the listener into another dimension.
After this album, the very harsh, crispy and saturated drums
became Flying Lotus’ trademark and
signature. However, tracks such as “Testament”
and “Auntie’s Lock/Infinitum”,
featuring respectively Gonjasufi and Laura Darlington, constitute FlyLo’s
interest in jazz, soul and in the willing to combine these genres within his
own glitchy productions. In this album, he also tributes his auntie Alice Coltrane using samples of one of
her unreleased harp solos.
- “Cosmogramma” (2010)
After giving a proper sound to glitch-hop and inspiring
artists all over the world with his previous album, “Cosmogramma” manages to improve even more the sound FlyLo
presented in the “LA” series. Often
portrayed as the best Flying Lotus’ album
ever, this truly is a unique gem of its kind.
For the making of this album, FlyLo collaborated with over ten artists including Thundercat (bass) and Miguel Atwood-Ferguson (strings) from Brainfeeder, Radiohead’s front man and singer Thom Yorke and his cousin, Ravi
Coltrane (saxophone). Starting off with a not so calm intro in pure style FlyLo, a complex rough beat combined
with the bass scales of Thundercat
follows in, and it almost seems like we are attending an electronic jazz “jam session”. Very experimental, messy
and rough, it almost seems unbearable towards the end, until the vibe-switch
brought by “Nose Art” kicks in with
its theatrical filtered strings and glitchy beat. Going on track after track,
we experience groovy and crunchy beats switching into warm and airy atmospheres
given by silky instrumentals with just a touch of saturation. The sense of
separation we felt in the previous records, where the melodic, jazzy and soul
tracks were played at the end of the album, is now broken. The vibe of the
album takes the listener from electronic and free jazz tracks smoothly into
more crispy beats with sort of Asian atmospheres given by harps, strings and
loud crashes. The tracks switch smoothly one after the other, but we get a sort
of “sense of urgency”, given by the incredible variety of the tracks’ rhythms
and experimentation that, even though have a common emotional vibe, differ in
structure and tempo.
This album is artistically crucial to Flying Lotus, as he had never before been so far from J Dilla’s hip-hop vibe that inspired his
music at the very beginning.
- “Until the Quiet Comes” (2012)
Considered one of the best electronic music albums of 2012,
this LP represents Flying Lotus’ peak of creativity as well
as a perfect fusion of free jazz, electronic and glitch-hop.
“Until the Quiet Comes”
is the resulted collaboration with Erykah
Badu featuring on the track “See Thru
To U”, in addition to most of the same artists that worked on “Cosmogramma”.
The expectations from this record were very high from the
beginning, not only because of a second cooperation with Thom Yorke on this album, but also because of the great
advertisement and preview of the LP. A
short film directed by Kahlil Joseph
that came out a month before the release, introduced three of the “pillar tracks” of the album. Very
emotional, artistic and perfectly fitting the FlyLo vibes’ of the tracks, the trailer of “Until the Quiet Comes” started respecting the expectations of the
album even before its release.
Flying Lotus knew
that topping the level of experimentation of the urgent and brutal sound he
developed in “Cosmogramma” would have
been difficult, so it embraced the same level of variety with a new
minimalistic, dreamy and almost timeless approach.
Even though the sound remains rough and glitchy throughout
the majority of the album, everything seems polished and cleaner, especially in
“Tiny Tortures”, where very clean and
loud sub-bass create the perfect mellow environment for crackles and moving
chords.
Defined by many with the concept of “dream within a dream”, this album is a true piece of art that
brought significant changes even in Flying
Lotus performances. Since the concepts of dreaming and detachment were prominent
in the album, FlyLo wanted to bring
those emotions in visual form during his performances. The project “Layer3” was born for this purpose; it
consists in the use of two 3D
projectors working on two different transparent screens, one placed in front of
the performer and one behind. The idea was to create a trippy and interesting
environment that would allow the audience to visualize and eventually enhance
the emotions given by the music. Two different engineers, Timeboy and Strangeloop both
from Brainfeeder, elaborate
projections and designs “live” during the performance.
- Captain Murphy – “Duality” (2012)
This project initially came out with the single “Mighty Morphin Foreskin” extracted from
this album. Featuring a bright, colored video with psychedelic effects, this
track really attracted some attention, especially since nobody knew who this
new artist was. Flying Lotus managed
to keep his secret double identity for quite a while even after the release of
the album.
“Duality” carries
this title mainly for this reason, as it symbolizes the double artistic
identity of Flying Lotus. Although
characteristics like short tracks, movie quotes samples and rough sound, give
it more the aspect of a mixtape rather than an album, this was a very
successful experiment for FlyLo.
With “Duality”, Flying Lotus demonstrates to be a
complete hip-hop and rap artist, not only for his well known ability of making
beats and rhythms, but also for his talent in rapping and writing.
- Brainfeeder -
As we have seen during the evolution of Flying Lotus’ career and sound, this label became more and more of
vital importance, given the collaborations of all the artists taking part into
the making of albums like “Cosmogramma”
and “Until the Quiet Comes”.
The artists involved into Brainfeeder represent an elite team of people that want to develop
music highly related to Flying Lotus’
sound and experiments, giving different interpretations or emphasizing certain
elements more than others.
In fact, whilst we find artists like TOKiMONSTA, Dibiase or
Daedelus, heavily based on hip-hop, we also come across Teebs and Lapalux, which explore more spacey, trippy and jazzy tendencies.
Today, Brainfeeder
is considered one the best label of its kind, probably because of its unique
vibes, moods and textures.
The label got even more popularity since the release, this
September, of the video-game “GTA V”,
in which Flying Lotus has his own
radio station, playing unreleased tracks from Brainfeeder artists and guests.
This label has unfortunately also suffered a big loss when
22 years-old Austin Peralta, jazz
musician and pianist, passed away in November 2012.
Thundercat, as
tribute to this close friend, has
dedicated his latest album to him.
- Description of a
representative track:
Flying Lotus feat.
Dolly – Roberta Flack (“Los Angeles”)
Choosing one sole track that represents on its own Flying Lotus’ music is not easy task.
Even though FlyLo has kept his
distinctive drums and sound, he has always been able renovate himself over the
years. Although, I think this track represents FlyLo more than any other probably because it simplifies the
essence of the artist and of the glitch-hop genre.
The record has a fairly downtempo beat where shifted claps,
misplaced shakers and counter beat kicks give the perfect swing to the sweet
and delicate voice of Dolly. Keeping
a very mellow, delicate and slightly detuned atmosphere given by the lo-fi bass
line and the background noises and glitches, this record communicates a variety
of different emotions. Although the beat keeps the vibe towards a more “metallic” feeling, quite intimate and
slightly nostalgic, the voice truly lights up the textures giving it a very
airy, spacey, almost happy and carefree feeling. Despite the sadness of the
beat itself, the voice manages to turn melancholy into reflection and relaxation.
The slight reverb and delay on Dolly’s lyrics,
underline the soul tone of her voice especially during her hoarse falsetto,
giving a sort of supernatural and angelic feeling to it.
Guided by this tempo and this dreamy atmosphere, we can
almost walk with the singer during her “way home”. The tempo is kept quite simple with a classic 4/4, enriched by noises and sound
effects. Very interesting are the last fifty seconds of the track, which
witness a complete change of pace typical of Flying Lotus’ productions. Much faster and complex, this beat also
features a massive distorted bassline as well a change of rhythm, reducing the
tempo from 4/4 to 1/4 for a quick outro break. The track
wants to celebrate the famous jazz and soul singer Roberta Flack, demonstrating
one more time the love of Flying Lotus
for soul and jazz.
