It is with great pleasure that LSP (along with Element Nightclub) brings Steven Ellison aka Flying Lotus back to Victoria. His set last July was a mindblower for so many… myself alone, it inspired me to venture deeper into Ableton & its live capabilities – I remember with such clarity FlyLo dropping Squarepusher’s “Come On My Selecta” & morphing it into “What’s My Name?” by Snoop Dogg – like WTF!

Facebook event

For those keeping tabs, FlyLo is on motherfucking fire right now. He’s accomplished the seemingly impossible, managing to gain a reputable amount of crossover appeal with music that takes no prisoners when it comes to accessibility & adventurous creative spirit. Los Angeles was not an easy record, even for beat heads. But that’s so much of what makes Flying Lotus’ music such worthy investment. With that record & an earlier EP on Warp Reset (PLUS his heavily slept-on Plug Research debut 1983) Steven Ellison bridged the festering chasm that was developing between hip-hop & electronic music. He resurrected the confused spirit of Scott Herren’s amazing run of releases at the beginning of the 90′s as Prefuse 73 but managed to hone in on more cerebral relationships between hop’s bop & idm’s oft-complex schematics. Fusing jazz, psychedelia, bass-music, hip-hop & an amazing sense of texture, Flying Lotus’ tunes often sound literally like the music of intense, hyperactive dreamscapes. But perhaps what surprises most about FlyLo’s labyrinth of sonics is just how well it works in a party club environment. Lurching breaks fuse into hip-hop classics; idm beatscapes are melded with r&b vox; the glut of the current beat-scene is usually represented (Rustie, HudMo, Samiyam, Joker et al) but there are also moments that allow for a breather – ya know, dynamics for chrissakes.

So there’s no better time than now – with heavy anticipation of his new record Cosmagramma (due April 20 on Warp) – for FlyLo to bust Element open with a live set of grindin’, head-noddin, ethereal broken beat madness. Sample some harder to find gems below & PLEASE if you haven’t already, download the BBC Radio1 Essential Mix.

Flying Lotus “Quakes” from Warp2010

Flying Lotus “Rickshaw” from L.A. EP 1X3

Flying Lotus “Paper Crane Gang” from L.A. EP 1X3

Martyn “Natural Selection [Flying Lotus Cleanse Mix]“

Dabrye, Phat Kat & J Dilla “Game Over [Flying Lotus Remix]“

download Flying Lotus BBC Radio1 Essential Mix – literally fucking essential

download A Decade Of Flying Lotus Mixed By The Gaslamp Killer