The Idiosyncratic Genius of Flying Lotus: “Flamagra” Album Review
By Carter Fife
The first time I ever heard Flying Lotus I was in high school driving around downtown San Fransisco with a close friend of mine who had the privilege of selecting the soundtrack for the day. I can distinctly remember when “Coronus, The Terminator” came through the speakers, and I immediately turned to my friend and asked him: “What is this, and is there more of it?”. The song was so minimal in composition, while also demonstrating an emotional tone so passionate and meaningful that I had to hear more. Few artists have provoked such an instant interest within me, and since then I have delved deeply into every album, every project, and every track that he has been involved with thus far. Although Flying Lotus, also known as ‘FlyLo’, has not been exactly radio silent since his last album in 2014, the amount of excitement that a five year wait can instill into a fanbase as committed as his is almost unparalleled.
Announced just a month ago, I spent the past few weeks ravenous for new information and music from the Los Angeles Native. Before listening to the album on release day, I combed through the liner notes. I felt joy seeing names I recognized, and researched the names I didn’t. I wanted to know what to expect, who would be playing what instrument on certain tracks, and who the writers, producers and engineers were as well. Gradually, the hype I felt shifted increasingly into a synthesis of excitement and anxiety as I read names like Solange, Thundercat, and even a personal hero of mine, Toro Y Moi as contributors to the album. This anxiety may seem uncommon, but after similar experiences with the Gorillaz’s 2017 return HUMANZ, and Travis Scott’s sophomore album Birds in the Trap Sing McKnight, I was worried that the 27 track, 67 minute album that many had waited so long for would be potentially too busy. While the previous albums weren’t necessarily disappointments, I was concerned that Flying Lotus’s sixth studio record may have been muddled with the ideas of others preventing the talent of FlyLo to shine through.
I could not have been more wrong.
Flamagra sees Ellison at his peak, with almost every track being simultaneously quick and easy to digest, while also having the depth and richness of a legendary piece of classical music. This is not an understatement. Somehow each of the 27 tracks are just as resonant as the last, lending themselves to a cohesive whole, though some songs exist in totally different musical genres. Every moment subverts your expectations, whether it is the melodies, arrangements, chord progression, percussion, or even the brief moments of lyricism on certain tracks. Back from a long hiatus, Ellison presents the listener with 27 tracks that are the aural equivalent of rich appetizers: easy to consume but almost impossible to completely understand. That is a good thing however, as I’ve listened to certain tracks dozens of times and am still picking out drums, effects, and vocals that were previously hidden.
The opening track “Heroes” is an eerie introduction to Flying Lotus’s return to form. The lush instrumentation and hazy feel gives the song an almost vaporware-flavor. Suddenly as the percussion picks up, samples from Dragonball Z come in as the musical tone shifts as well. The track turns over into a more jazz-oriented composition, with Thundercat simply massacring the track with a hectic but funky guitar riff. The guitar ends, “Heroes” turns over once more into a spacious and ambient track as if to say, “catch your breath, there’s no slowing down”, and the next track begins.
“Post Requisite”, the second track, borrows many musical themes and ideas previously explored in Flylo’s genre-defining Cosmogramma and Los Angeles albums. Fans of favorites like “Auntie’s Harp” and “Do the Astral Plane” will be unable to resist this banger, as Post Requisite's funk-laden baselines and constantly changing drum patterns make it clear that Thundercat had a hand in this song’s creation. In addition to this, the jazzy low-fi elements of this track almost feels like Flying Lotus has returned home with a few new tricks up his sleeve.
“Heroes in a Half Shell” is another track with the classic random humor of Ellison in the title, and although it is only half as long as the previous track, it still contains a busy and hectic piano arrangement with notes drifting in and out of earshot, as if one was floating down a river with multiple piano concerts happening just feet away. The song transitions nicely into “More” featuring a truly killer performance by Anderson .Paak, who delivers a mediation on love and self-reflection. He sings on the infectiously catchy hook, "Breakin' you down to size / There's gotta be more to life than myself / That's when I caught light of myself / Gotta be somethin' more that I can't tell”. Paak’s effortless confidence pairs well with the background vocals from Norelle, and clocking in at just over 4 minutes, this track is one of only three songs on the album to break the four minute mark.
The next track “Capillaries” is a slightly off-kilter and glitchy cut from the album, with delicate piano melodies that are vaguely reminiscent of entering a quiet bathroom during a busy party. The track also features very heavy percussion that conveys a hard-hitting marching feel when paired with the other instruments. This rhythm continues into “Burning Down the House”, where kicks and claps come together with a sometimes funky, sometimes ambient instrumentation. It is a nice detour before “Spontaneous” featuring the Swedish electronic-fusion band Little Dragon, an ethereal track with vocals so dreamlike that only Little Dragon could deliver. This track is all over the place, sometimes sounding like 80’s rock music, and other times like jazz or funk, but by the time the song ends, it feels just as consistent as it did in the opening seconds.
“Takashi” is the longest track on the album by far, and at just under six-minutes, it is easily also one of the most infectiously fun and playful cuts off the album. Flylo’s use of the classic analog Rhodes synthesizer paired with the mechanical and calculated feeling of the drums makes this song truly unique and an invaluable part of Flamagra as a whole. The upbeat and electric feeling of the song fits almost every situation, whether it be a crowded house party, or a quiet morning at home. The song ends before you know it, slowly winding down while still maintaining its funky atmosphere before transitioning into “Pilgrim Side Eye”. One of the goofiest and most eclectic tracks on the album, this moment features writing credits from Herbie Hancock and features instruments that are played in reverse in instances akin to a modern Captain Beefheart. Right when you think you have the track figured out, the beat switches into spacious and dreamlike pads that transition nicely into track ten, “All Spies”.
Featuring a much more conventional drum track, “All Spies” has a distinctly nostalgic 8-bit feel that was commonly invoked on Ellison’s 2014 album You’re Dead!. It is fun, experimental, and features a bit of a musical shift in the track list. “Yellow Belly” featuring Philadelphia native Tierra Whack is a very heavy throwback to FlyLo’s “Dead Man’s Tetris”, with playful rapping paired over stilted percussion and weighty low-pitch synth melodies. Whack raps humerously "In the sky, I'm so high, everyone looks up to me / You a virgin, you could not compete (I put my titties in his face)” before the song quickly changes into the comparably darker experimental rap-track “Black Balloons Reprise” featuring Denzel Curry.
This track is everything one could hope for from a Flying Lotus and Denzel Curry collaboration, where themes from Curry’s 2018 TA13OO shine through when he raps "The night turns to day and my days don't seem the brightest / ... I wanna take a bite out of what life is / If the President fuck around and piss off ISIS / Bury me in blueberry bills, jewels, and ices”. With multiple layers of background vocal layers, the song carries with it a simultaneously funky, and choir-inspired classic rap track. Curry closes his verse by lamenting "I kick that funky shit until my casket closed”, and he is not wrong.
The next track “Fire is Coming” contains a horrifying spoken word piece by David Lynch about a family realizing that a fire is approaching their house. This is a theme that Flamagra is centered around, a concept that Ellison describes as “...a lingering concept about fire, an eternal flame sitting on a hill […] Some people love it, some people hate it”. The track, like the concept, contains a science-fiction adjacent composition with ambient and space-like pads and heavy bass, with the classic Thundercat and Flying Lotus funk that is so present on the record. Released as one of the singles leading up to the album’s release, “Fire is Coming” ended up being a self-fulfilling prophecy about Lotus’s own upcoming album.
“Inside Your Home” is a much more spacious and elegant track, with occasionally hectic and busy moments that one would come to expect from Flying Lotus. It acts as a short interlude before “Actually Virtual” featuring vocals from the legendary Seattle-based group, Shabazz Palaces. Delivering lines like "From east blew in a plush wind, with nomads that blow grass /To gold flow that's so passionate, styles dash, we so cash”, this track is incredibly engaging despite the sparse instrumentation that occupies the background of the song. The following track Andromeda is a very chill and relaxed track that almost sounds like it could be an indie-rock song at times. It is just as enjoyable as it is short, as just after a minute passes, it is over.
The last third of the album begins with “Remind U”, a similarly chill and laid-back track that gradually unfolds and flourishes as the song becomes more and more upbeat. The drums pick up, the bass lines go faster, and right before they reach a climax they recoil back as a glittering piano track ends the song as quickly as it began. “Say Something” is a beautifully haunting track containing some of the most vaudevillian string melodies since Panic! At The Disco’s A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out almost a decade ago. Although the song is also fairly short, the wonky piano melodies in the background make the track a nice but ominous detour before Debbie is Depressed. This track is a simultaneously funky and upbeat soulful track, though the vocals contain some of the most dejected lyricism on the album. The song is about the monotony of quotidian life, and how it is both a blessing and a curse. The track ends quickly with an angelic string arrangement that stands in strong opposition to the sadness laid out in the track. “Find Your Own Way Home” continues this string track into a track that softly blooms and wilts in under two minutes.
“The Climb” features vocals from Thundercat, and fans of his last album Drunk will be sure to love this song. The vocal harmonies are incredibly lush, and Thundercat’s falsetto singing sounds amazing over the jazzy and hip-hop influenced drums and the dense string sections. Created in perhaps an optimistic light after “Debbie is Depressed”, Thundercat sings "Most of the things we're going through make no sense / Even though you feel alone, it's not the end / And when you're feeling out of place and nowhere you can hide / Just close your eyes and take a breath and you'll be alright”. “The Climb” is definitely one of the high points on the album, as Thundercat and Flying Lotus are able to pair jazz, soul, disco, and hip-hop into one easily accessible track that will be in heavy rotation for many fans of the like this summer. After the song ends, the two take a breather with “Pygmy”, a fun and exotic-sounding track containing echoing nature samples and chill contemporary piano melodies.
Thins begin to pick up again on “9 Carrots” featuring Toro Y Moi, where the track begins with powerfully delicate strings and angelic vocal harmonies before transitioning into a funky and vintage soul beat. Ellison and Bear trade lines while singing about the loss of love, detailing its emotional strain with lyrics like "There's a woman that I know / Who now wants me feeling happier when the day breaks / … / Don't you give it away, give it away”. Both Bear and Ellison’s signature styles of chill wave and experimental electronic funk find a new home on this track, and together they both sound utterly incredible.
“Ff4” is one of the four closing tracks on the album, featuring a soft and elegant instrumental arrangement of piano flourishes and chords, as well as low-fi drum patterns that almost make this sound like a direct cut off of the youtube playlist ‘low-fi songs to chill/study to’. The track ends, an ominous and beautiful string arrangement fades in and out, and Solange begins to sing on “Land of Honey”. There is not much to say about this song that can accurately portray how well Flying Lotus and Solange pair together, as their combined talents offer themselves on a track that is the musical equivalent to slowly sauntering around a beautifully overgrown garden. Solange even nods to the concept directing Flamagra, singing "When you see smoke, there's fire”, and softly singing “Hallelujah” as the song quietly ends.
“Thank You Malcolm” is very similar to “Remind U”, as both tracks start soft before increasing in intensity, and right before their peak, the song transitions into the next track. Both these tracks, while beautiful in their own rights, act as springboards into the following tracks, and in the case of “Thank You Malcolm”, the song launches the the listener into the final track, “Hot Oct.”.
Like the very first moments on Flamagra, “Hot Oct.” contains many elements of vaporware music that convey a sense of the fantastical and the surreal. Ambient pads and down-pitched vocals slowly lead the listener out of the album, as the song slowly and peacefully fades away. Like Denzel Curry said on Black Balloons Reprise, “We all die”, and just like that Flamagra is over.
It is no easy task to host as many musicians and collaborators as Flying Lotus has on Flamagra, while still maintaining the personal integrity and identity of the album as your own album. This balancing act is made effortless by Flying Lotus, as each collaborator, such as Thundercat and his camp, Anderson .Paak and his camp, Little Dragon, Toro Y Moi, Tierra Whack, Denzel Curry and Herbie Hancock, is in a position that makes sense within the narrative of the album. None of them overpower the work of Flying Lotus, as each one is able to play with and flourish under the canvas that Flying Lotus has laid out for them. While at first I was skeptical as to how Ellison could pull this off, he proved me wrong by creating Flamagra, an album that is so layered and complex that it seems much more appropriate to call it an elaborate dinner party that Flying Lotus is hosting for his friends.
Very few other artists host the talents that Flying Lotus has, and even fewer artists could pull off such an exceptional feat such as this project. Every song is its own moment of diverse instrumentation and emotional tone, and I am happy to say that Flamagra was worth the wait. Few artists alive are as idiosyncratic and talented as Flying Lotus, so it logically follows that if any artist could pull this off after all, it would be him. Be sure to check him out at a live show sometime, his visuals and music will be sure to capitate even the most skeptical critics. In the meantime, I’ll be anxiously awaiting the release of his next project.
Favorite Tracks:
(too many to choose)
Post Requisite
The Climb (Feat. Thundercat)
9 Carrots (Feat. Toro Y Moi)
Rating 10
Listen to Flamagra here:
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