There are brilliant under the radar careers and there’s that of Steven Ellison, AKA Flying Lotus. Ground breaking music? his debut album Los Angeles was a revelation and it’s sucessor Cosmogramma earned him a Grammy nomination. Directing movies? check. Writing movie scores? check. On top of that he’s been patriarch of his own Brainfeeder label for almost 20 years, an outlet which has released works by the likes of Thundercat, Hiatus Kaiyote and Kamasi Washington. Just, wow.
What Brainfeeder hadn’t done though was release any Flying Lotus material, a presumably deliberate oversight that the Big Mama EP rectifies. An idea that began when Ellison was locked away in New Zealand composing a fresh score, its very much designed to be consumed as one thirteen minute journey, composed of seven individual segments.
In this fun but freaky world the title track’s gorgeous liquid drum n’ bass swims with CAPTAIN KERNEL’s glitchy acid funk, ANTELOPE ONIGIRI recycles the rules-free techno of Drexciya, whilst BROBASHER is the only real attempt at making it into a club that isn’t populated by aliens.Steven Ellison’s career is testament to success on his own terms, and this time Big Mama is the multi textural, brain feeding noise he wants to make.
You can read a full review here.
The Voice Of Unreason 