Flying Lotus has become well renowned for his ability of firing out immense beats that rappers wish they could be on and producer’s wish they could get close to constructing. Deciding to let his beats speak for themselves is one of the first things Lotus gets so right. A descendant of the late great Jazz artist Alice Coltraine, Flying Lotus is stripping his output down to jarring loops, atmospherics and drums he creates this tribal, pagan drive that engulfs each track making their rhythmic shunts incredibly hard to withstand.
Rolling out more like a beat tape than a singles based album everything flows gently into each other seasoning up Ellison’s trademark sound with salty bass barrages and coarse snares that hit just after (or before) they should. Suffice to say quantization is a concept Mr. Lotus seems to willfully disregard but it’s this apathy for regular, metronome anchored drum patterns that gives his songs the enduringly noddable groove they induce so regularly; it’s as if by being a little sloppy on the snares it gives him this gaudy ability to make your neck work overtime.
The mid album trilogy of ‘Riot’, ‘GNG BNG’ and ‘Parisian Goldfish’ is a glimpse of Ellison at his most potent. On ‘Riot’ bass rumbles introduce themselves immediately, hinting at something grim on the horizon, whilst double clap snares and radio feedback underpin the jagged piano melody. ‘GNG BNG’ works overtime to suck you into a false lull with its eloquent sitar loops before it whips up into this low end fuelled requiem of gain and compressed drums before the samba rhythm of ‘Parisian Goldfish’ trickles in through the frenzied distortion gateway-ing to yet more oodles of rapid synth bass and pounding drums.
’Los Angeles’ is the album Flying Lotus has always hinted at with his previous releases. It’s blatantly apparent that he’s a killer when he’s on production duty and he has a dependable flair for marrying abstract samples with a sheer Californian thump that creams up all over this LP. When you break apart what he does it seems like its simple, like he’s tackled half the problem which his choice of textures but there are so many levels of density to his beats that it becomes a joy in itself to sit with some headphones and try a pick out a new synth wobble or percussive fibre.
Originally posted by the editor @ Leeds Hip Hop Scene
