Flying Lotus - Los Angeles

Flying Lotus
Los Angeles
(06.2008, Warp)
Verdict = electronic hip hop instrumentals that aren’t boring

Last year I got super excited for the new Prefuse 73 album that came out later in 2007. Already a big fan, I grabbed some of Prefuse’s less lauded releases that I had slept on and found them much more enjoyable than other critics had led me to believe. However, once Preparations came out I just couldn’t lock in and listen. Maybe I had Prefuse 73-ed myself out for the year by listening to everything I picked up in advance to the release, maybe the record was really as blah as some said, I’m not ready to say just yet. Alls I know is that the inner part of me that can only be satisfied by left field sampling and heavy hitting, jazz intoned hip hop beats was left wanting. Enter Flying Lotus: following up his debut, 1983, Alice Coltrane descendant Steven Ellison (AKA Flying Lotus, AKA FlyLo) scores again (from what I understand, this is my first FL album) with a flurry of textures and samples surrounding one of the best instrumental hip hop/electronica albums I have heard in a long time. Instrumental hip hop is a tricky genre to be successful in. It takes a meticulous ear to sort through the beats and samples in order to create something that’s more than just a backdrop for an emcee; something that demands the whole of your attention. Fortunately Flying Lotus is well adept at creating engaging beats with the perfect amount of headphone candy to keep your intellect’s attention while your head absent-mindedly nods to the beat. Bustling with cracked beats and bustling analog destruction, FlyLo hits all the right pleasure points and, as with any hip hop producer worth his salt, never stagnates too long on a beat before moving on to the next. Los Angeles is an essential listen for the backpacker crowd. I beginning to wonder why I even mentioned Prefuse - long love FlyLo!

-Mr. Thistle

Flying Lotus on Myspace