Flying Lotus - Los Angeles (Warp)
4/5
By: Holly Barnes
BUY DOWNLOADLos Angeles didn't make an awful lot of sense to me. Not at first, anyway. With artwork ripped from Massive Attack's Mezzanine and music coming from a place somewhere between ambient, hip-hop, breaks and electro, I wasn't sure what I was meant to do with this record. It all came together one evening, listening on the laptop in a dark room lighted only by a small desk lamp. Flying Lotus, aka Steven Ellison, has created an album that brings everything closer; he approaches, pushing the walls around you inwards, imperceptibly and inch by inch. The listener feels both protectively cocooned and claustrophobic. Over seventeen tracks, the shining beetle-like creature on the album cover becomes real, and the glitch-hop beats are the sound of something investigating us with curiosity and perhaps a little menace.
The record, Flying Lotus' second full-length, flows like a mixtape, but the ideas within are all from one man, the nephew of another innovator, Alice Coltrane. Each track is its own soundscape, flowing onto the next seamlessly. These predominantly instrumental pieces crackle like old vinyl or TV static, and they ripple and pulse with sumptuousness. Certain tracks like 'Golden Diva' possess a libidinous force that is sensual, primal and contagious. Maybe it's down to the delayed beats or perhaps it's the mysterious noises of breathy exertion; either way, this is the sound of heady desire.
Other pieces feel less organic, built from shards of beats, as on 'Comet Course', and electronic twitches ('Sleepy Dinosaur'). 'Beginners Falafel' combines the two registers as it bubbles upward like Roots Manuva's 'Witness (One Hope)'. It may be that this juxtaposition of human desire and technological advance begin to explain the way Steven Ellison perceives Los Angeles, with the struggle to make meaningful connections with others, through any avenue necessary. However, the record moves beyond LA, showing traces of other cultures; 'Melt!' has an incredible percussiveness to it, with African rhythms and whistles, while baile-funk beats make an appearance on 'Parisian Goldfish'.
Every track on Los Angeles has been carefully constructed from a million different layers that form a cohesive whole. These can result in something heavy and intense- 'GNG BNG' is weighed down by thick bass- or lighter prospects like album closer 'Auntie's Lock/Infinitum', with the rounded and reedy vocals of Laura Darlington. 'RobertaFlack' is even better, where Dolly's delicious vocals eventually give way towards the end to the noise of corn popping or hail hitting a roof.
Los Angeles runs the whole gamut: sweetly ambient, fierce glitch-hop, paranoid breaks, sensuous electronica- but never one at a time. Flying Lotus has invited the listener into a sonic world of his own creation, and once inside it's impossible to leave.
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