Flying Lotus - Big Mama EP: Review

Artwork for flying lotus' big mama ep

4 stars hq

On ‘Big Mama’, Flying Lotus takes a vacation into the deepest recesses of his own creativity.

Sometimes the most attractive destination can be in ending up anywhere but yourself.

Known professionally as Flying Lotus, Steven Ellison has had a career now entering its third decade. During this time he’s created two of electronic music’s seminal modern works in 2007’s Los Angeles and its successor Cosmogramma; won a Grammy, directed films, written scores and ran his own label, Brainfeeder.

Brainfeeder has some very notable alumni in the likes of Thundercat, Hiatus Kaiyote and Kamasi Washington but, perhaps weirdly, it had never to this point released any of Ellison’s own work. Big Mama changes that.

Its origins lie in a period of isolation spent directing and scoring his latest feature film Ash, a process that saw him going back-to-basics in New Zealand with just his laptop and some other low-tech gadgetry.

The result is a thirteen-minute stream of musical consciousness which, he says, contains no loops, forged in a no rules environment which constituted a, ‘Place where I could just vent out some of my inner chaos’.

This allows the idea of cohesion to be another producer’s problem. Transitions are dizzying and non-linear; the titular opening track is thirty-five seconds of liquid drum n’ bass that segues into CAPTAIN KERNEL’s rubbery, 8-bit jazz funk (think Herbie Hancock jamming with Hudson Mohawk), which then transitions into ANTELOPE ONIGIRI’S bonkers, ADHD techno (think Drexciya, but even more out there).

Writing about the tracks in order isn’t usually the critically done thing, but as here they’re presented that way – well, we don’t make the rules.

IN THE FOREST – DAY (there isn’t a night variant) is fronted by some energetic scaling and a modest key change, whilst BROBASHER’s propulsive beats similarly are the first time this Flying Lotus project meaningfully locates the dance floor.

In Big Mama’s genesis Ellison worked by producing no more than fifteen seconds of fresh material a day, making HORSE NUKE’s electro-leaning fabric a remarkable study in slow building hyperactivity.

Closer PINK DREAM then gives up any pretence of sanity, a blast of seemingly unrelated patches and tempo switching which surely resembles the noise made by a rogue Windows 95 laptop after it’s been electrocuted.

Sometimes the most attractive destination can be in ending up anywhere but yourself; on Big Mama, Steven Ellison takes a vacation into the deepest recesses of his own creativity, throwing off the shackles and taking the listener on a freeform
sonic journey.

Freedom like this is meant to be fun – and it is.