I knew there would be a large crowd for Flying Lotus’ DJ set and signing at Amoeba, but this kind of crowd? I can’t afford to come two hours early for each concert I am going to, so I was lucky once again I could get in.
Steven Ellison, who goes with the poetic moniker of Flying Lotus, is famous, very famous, and I am sure his secret DJ sets with Thom Yorke at Low End Theory didn’t hurt, but I take this back, he doesn’t need Thom, he is Los Angeles beat master or something… he recently opened for Animal Collective at the Hollywood Bowl, and you know that when you play the Bowl…
Flying Lotus started his set in the store packed with a young crowd, and I saw that many of them had already the vinyl version of ‘Until the Quiet Comes’ under their arm, having taken the advantage to buy the new album one day before its official release (October 2).
Honestly, I am the worst at recognizing samples in these sorts of things, it’s especially hard for me because there were a lot of rap samples and my hip hop culture is rather lacking. But I did recognize the Beastie Boys’ ‘Intergalatic’ at the end, yeah I am not to that point, and I always get that one. But I am sure it’s not what matters with Flying Lotus, the soundscape is too complex, too hard to follow to be playing this little game, and whatever samples are in the mix are totally his at the end. I have said it before, I don’t understand what’s going on with DJs, and Flying Lotus looked extremely busy and very concentrated, constantly moving head and hands so that I couldn’t get a good picture! His music was almost pure beats most of the time beside some rare female voice (may be Erykah Badu who sings on his new album) and some other melodies.
Whether some of it was part improvised or actual tracks, he seemed to sculpt beat after beat with ease and for the deepest enjoyment of the crowd, cheering and slowly banging their heads to follow the constant beats, the swirling synth noises and what sounded like a deep bass. Every produced sound was coming from his Mac and whatever he was doing when turning the knobs in front of him, and the result sounded like a maze, a sonic collage with one surprising detour after another one, as, all the sudden, there was some hand clapping.
But the more I try to describe what I witnessed, the less I am able to, it was too dense-swampy-electronica circus, with multi-layers of eclectic bleeps, under-water effects, siren-alarms thrown-in-the-mix, multi-frequency sounds and tracks which would never end.
I sure admired the technique and his easiness to get all these sounds with an-out-of-this-world fluidity, but for some reasons, I was never able to really connect emotionally, as it is always the case for me with this kind of stuff. The waves of sounds are like an interesting adventure but I always observe like an outsider.
I saw Diplo a few months ago, but it wasn’t the same story. Diplo is a party guy and makes people constantly jump and dance, whereas Flying Lotus is less flamboyant, although he was sometimes interrupting his game to say a few words in the mic, smiling and looking very happy. But he is more meditative and sober, cooler may be, or even jazzier? Actually, I discovered he is the great-nephew of Alice Coltrane, jazz pianist and wife of John Coltrane, which could explain many things.