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Los Angeles-based producer Steven Allison, better known as Flying Lotus, was emblematic of a generation that was employing laptop computers to generate sounds that were impossible before.
The mostly instrumental
1983 (2006) also displayed a broad range of stylistic influences,
in particular the passion for revisiting the instrumental music of the 1960s.
The overture 1983 bridged three eras by blending
sound collage, hip-hop beat and synthesized carillon-like melody
(that the final remix turns into a silly singalong).
A twisted sense of humor brings him to stage the
grotesque vaudeville dance of Pet Monster Shotglass
and to mock the guitar-based atmospheric instrumentals in Bad Actors.
At the same time Allison likes to engage in an abstract form of dance-music
that can be both inarticulate and shapeless (Untitled #7, the
acid hyper-syncopated Sao Paulo). The
cold mechanic ballet Orbit Brazil is almost ominous.
The one actual song, Unexpected Delight, sounds like
a hip-hop version of Air and
Stereolab.
Los Angeles (Warp, 2008) is a much lighter work.
When they appear, vocals are a mixed blessing: the
hypnotic ethereal lullaby Auntie's Lock,
the dilated and distorted ballad Roberta Flack,
and the slow acid-blues litany Testament are intriguing but hardly
revolutionary.
The bulk of the collection consists of
classy multifaceted instrumentals such as
Beginners Falafel (cyclic beats, sensual galactic wails, synth bubbles),
Comet Course (frenzied Caribbean beat, ghostly voices, liquid jazzy keyboards),
and
Riot (a dubby cacophony that slowly disintegrates like in a nervous breakdown).
The winners are a couple of rhythmic montages
(the Indian hoe-down that mutates into a gargantuan drum'n'bass
in GNG BNG and the
demented batucada of Parisian Goldfish)
and a couple of atmospheric meditations
(the cosmic psychedelic Golden Diva with sexy pulsations, and the
sound collage over swampy beat of Breathe Something/ Stellar Star).
Flying Lotus' aesthetic might be best summarized by the
impressionistic Brian Eno-esque vignettes, notably
the stuttering videogame-inspired Sleepy Dinosaur,
the reverbed symphonic overture Brainfeeder and the equatorial night
pow-wow dance of Sex Slave Ship.
That's where the chemistry of his laboratory excels.
Cosmogramma (Warp, 2010), ostensibly a tribute to his late aunt
Alice Coltrane, exhibited a much busier
production than any of the previous albums.
Steven Allison used all his skills on laptop, sampler and drum machine,
and integrated more generous doses than ever of live instrumentation.
The general result is that his instrumentals jump out of the grooves.
Clock Catcher is a pulsing dance between Rebecca Raff's harp and Ravi Coltrane's didjeridoo-sounding tenor saxophone.
The chaotic brainy noise Pickled, the
neurotic synth-dub Nose Art, the
orchestral pastiche Intro A Cosmic Drama,
the orgy of bass and keyboards Satelllliiiiiiiteee
are, first and foremost, brief explosions of creative nonsense.
That they are "brief" is the real problem.
Galaxy In Janaki is a whirlwind of electronic effects and of strings a` la orchestral soundtrack from the 1960s.
Several of these tiny demonstrations are about beat collisions, like the
miniature rhythmic nightmares Zodiac Shit and Computer Face Pure Being.
And The World Laughs With You is a loud melodic-robotic debate (before Radiohead's vocalist Thom Yorke pops in to ruin the whole experience).
Melody takes the back seat. The only real "song" is
Table Tennis, scored for ping-pong balls, guitar and ethereal vocalist.
The more refined and less indulgent disco skits corral the various ideas
and funnel them into timbral dances.
Propelled by a funk-exotic galopping beat, Do The Astral Plane comes to be dominated by a string section arranged by Miguel Atwood-Ferguson that plays a Morricone-like melody.
Dance Of The Pseudo Nymph, a pseudo-batucada fueled by funk-jazz bass and disorderly clapping, is the catchiest moment on the album.
The legacy of free jazz finally shows up in the almost clownesque deconstruction of Arkestry, but it's Recoiled that, in theory, evokes the
era of the great free saxophonists, except that the piece is about something
else altogether (another postmodernist take on syncopated electronic dance music, i.e. on the age of drum'n'bass and dubstep).
Despite its pretext, the album is neither spiritual nor jazzy.
It is a twitching snake of electronic dance music that rarely pauses.
The main influences seem to be prog-rock, musique concrete and the intricate hip-hop productions of the time.
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