Flying Lotus
 

As is well known, it is difficult these days to determine what exactly a genre of music "is" or "authentically consists in". I have been listening rather incessantly to the recent(ish) Flying Lotus album, and it struck me that I couldn't figure out exactly where this music fits into the grander scheme of all things musical. I suppose it may be considered to be "experimental hip hop", since it exploits "the hip hop beat". On the other hand, it does not inhabit "the hip hop idiom", which, although it can probably not be reduced to any one thing, traditionally seems to have dealt thematically, for lack of a better phrase, with "the social reality/milieu of (American) hip hop artists and MCs". Flying Lotus's album certainly evinces an "aural landscape", but not also, or not also explicitly, a particular "social landscape" since Flying Lotus does not to any large extent present himself as a "personality" within the music. Similarly, Massive Attack, and "trip hop" in general, exploited, amongst other things, the hip hop beat without being "hip hop" in the traditional or "strict" or "genealogical" sense of the term.

So what this rambling amounts to is the following question: Can there be such thing as "experimental hip hop", or would this "form" rather be subsumed under the more "catch all" term "electronica"?

I think Flying Lotus' latest album Los Angeles is more electronic than it is hip-hop, but it still definitely includes some elements of hip-hop beats. It's just more distorted than his first one, 1983. His style is definitely hard to classify, but what I'm saying is if I had to pick hip-hop or electronic, it would be electronic. Trip-hop is what I generally categorize things that fall between those 2 genres.

Great stuff, by the way. His recent EPs are worth checking out too, especially Shhh!.

Los Angeles is all kinds of good, i would agree with it being more electro, though it does use hip hop beats as a central part of the album. Either way, pretty awesome stuff.

Los Angeles bored me senseless. No variation in the beats at all. He is usually labelled as a Laptop Musician I think.

I thinks its exquisitely textured, atmospheric electronica, with boredom being the last word to spring to mind, but different dtrokes for different folks.

I remember discovering this man from Adult Swim. Everytime that little bump that played message situation came on, I would always have to stop whatever I'm doing and listen. I was so glad when I actually found out the name (Adult Swim doesn't credit him when they use his music, its a shame, it was almost half a year before I figured out the name was Flying Lotus).

I'm really not sure what to classify his music as, I personally don't care. I tend to just describe the music and influences instead of trying to throw a pointless label on an artist. Flying Lotus definately has alot of jazz, electronic, maybe even free jazz (some tracks such as Sleepy Dinosaur have a complex, loose and free feel). A hip-hop and trip-hop influence is also definately there.

I haven't posted enough on this forum to post the link, but has anyone seen that INSANE 'Parisian Goldfish' by Flying Lotus video? It's totally NSFW, so be careful.

www dot dancefloorfale dot com

sorry, haven't posted enough on this forum for url posting capabilities.

Is it the one with the 2 people dancing and the wild colors? If so, it's pretty hilarious. :thumb:

i would say there's a lot of hip hop in Los Angeles. hip hop doesn't need to have lyrics or standard basslines to be hip hop. the beat in almost every track on that record screams 'hip hop'. it's like hip hop with a chill-out/ambient/electronica feel. i see how it could get boring to some people, but to me it's more of an ambient album, back-ground music. it's great when you take a walk, or just take a nap. there are a lot of inspirational ideas on some of the tracks.

I agree with just about every word.
If I had to label it - I'd say he makes hip-hop or at least "trip-hop" /downtempo.

It is an interesting album, to be sure, but if it is trip hop, or a kind of ambient hip-hop, how does it compare to, say, Massive Attack? (Certain of the stylistic traits on 'Los Angeles' seem to allude directly to an album like 'Protection', I think, so I feel that such a comparison is justified.)

i do agree that Los Angeles was a bit boring on the first listen. however, i like the way each song flows into the next, so the album has to be taken in AS A WHOLE. it's almost one really long song. i think that in and of itself separates it from the more traditional hip-hop/trip-hop aesthetics, while clearly borrowing from the two. it's very IDM-ish in it's approach and presentation. FL is more than a mere "Laptop Musician".

There are really two schools of thought when it comes to trip-hop. One is the Bristol-based stuff like Massive Attack and Portishead (that I'm not all that familiar with), and the other is a warmer feeling combination of electronic and hip-hop, or for lack of better words, instrumental hip-hop. I'm more into the later, and personally identify it producer-based hip-hop (often glitchy and IDM-influenced) that occasionally has guest hip-hop vocals or vocal samples. DJ Shadow, Prefuse 73, DJ Vadim, and the legions of artists that came after that. There was always glitch involved in the genre, at least in the second school I mentioned, but the term glitch-hop came about (talking of Flying Lotus, edIT, etc) as the glitches came more into focus rather than just being a detail of the sound. To me it's still trip-hop, as it was always there.

I am quite the opposite, since I am familiar with the Bristol-based version of "trip hop" rather than its "instrumental trip hop" counterpart in the United States. I am not too sure that Massive Attack, for example (although certainly not Portishead), doesn't evidence a "warmer" combination of electronica and hip-hop: "Unfinished Sympathy" would be an example of just such a combination.

Still, I think that Flying Lotus's "Los Angeles" is, in certain respects, highly indebted to Massive Attack. In fact, a few of the tracks could have come straight off a mid-nineties Massive Attack album like Protection, especially in terms of its "dub" effects (although it must be said that Flying Lotus's work is somewhat more up-tempo than the majority of MA's work).

Yeah like I said, I'm really not familiar with Bristol trip-hop. From what little I know, it feels cold.

Agreed, i thought the last Prefuse 73 album was dull as well.
1983 is better.

damn...i'm a n00b, but you kids must be n00bs to this style...
listen to : dabrye, caural, and dilla.

flylo elaborates on these styles, particularly the Detroit sound (Dabrye and Dilla, who inspired Dabrye), when it comes to beat structure. Trip-hop it is not. Massive Attack drew the blueprint for trip-hop (which isn't cold, it's soulful...it's a mix of dub, jazz, and hip-hop), elaborating on the Wild Bunch Sound System sound; Portishead soon followed. FlyLo's style isn't quite like it.

P.S., noobs ....it's called glitch-hop (although not nearly as out there as syndrone/machine drum)

Really? I listened to 1983 today for the first time after being virtually in love with Los Angeles for quite some time. My immediate reaction was that 1983 paled drastically in comparison to LA.

No need to come in here with a condescending attitude.

I agree with you on Dabrye and Dilla having influenced Flying Lotus to no end. I'd include Prefuse 73 in there too.

And the term glitch-hop is definitely appropriate for this stuff, but wasn't around (to my knowledge) in the early part of the decade...the only thing I could personally think to call this stuff was trip-hop (and I'm not the only one). Partly due to my lack of familiarity with the Bristol scene, and partly because the name really does fit the music, hip-hop beats that literally feel like they're tripping over each other. Hip-hop and IDM (the glitch and abstract element), basically. But ever since discovering Flying Lotus and even Dabrye before that, I've struggled to apply that same label (trip-hop) to them because it just didn't seem to fit like it did for Prefuse (to me). Glitch hop definitely works better and I think that's why the term has become more popular recently, many new artists have emerged following the footsteps of Dilla/Dabrye/Flying Lotus.

Anyway, life is a learning process. We don't all come out of the cannon knowing everything there is to know about everything.

As for Caural...never really got into him personally, seemed pretty boring.

I think Los Angeles is his best, definitely because he was able to find his own sound with that album. 1983 and Reset are the albums that make people compare him to Dilla (for better or worse) since it's so similar. Same with that demo that's floating about, Raw Cartoons...that Madlib/Dilla sound.

Jneiro Janel is another cat who has been doing this sound from time now.

but you can keep tracing this back to cats like pete rock, premier, marley marl if you wanted to. it all builds on each other I suppose

i have no idea what yous are on about, enlighten me, whats flying lotus :(?

This.

Los Angeles is a great release though, but not groundbreaking.

A musical artist. Have you used Google (or comparable search engine) before?

sarcasm? satchmo sent me a link in which im downloading this very second.

Well, you asked "whats flying lotus" so that implied you wanted to know what it was...a band, a producer, an actual flying lotus, I don't know. So the obvious answer would be that it's a musician but a quick google search would have told you that.

However if you were really just trying to ask "what kind of music does flying lotus make, what's it sound like?" then that's now what your question was asking. I would have offered a more helpful response if that's what you asked. ;)

in all honesty i never knew if it was a group, a 'movement' even. any names possible for anything in the music industry..

so what kind of music does flying lotus make?

He makes electronic music. Here are some of my favorite tracks by him:

YouTube - Flying Lotus - Tea Leaf Dancers Video (Lyrics Posted!)

YouTube - flying lotus - Sleepy Dinosaur - L.A. EP 1X3

YouTube - Flying Lotus - Breathe.Something/Stellar STar

This one is on me. Next time you will do the youtube searching yourself. :D

Flying Lotus is one of my favorite electronic musicians out there, he was one of the first electronic musicians that I started listening to, which brought me into a genre that I'm just beginning to scratch the surface of, and its all thanks to Adult Swim and their little music bumps. As soon as I heard a part 'Message Situation' being played on one of the channel's bumps, I desperately wanted to know the name of the artist.

Official release for his DJ Kicks mix is October 27!

:dj:

thank you :love:

Los Angeles is the nuts. It just drips along, oozing from song to song. I havent got any other stuff of his yet but it's on my list.

Anyone heard the soundmurderer edit of secrets on LA EP 2x3?

New album Cosmogramma will be out April 20. :thumb:

So that DJ Kicks mix was supposed to be out today and uh, still nothing. :confused: Just did a search and now see an April 13 release date for it. Flying Lotus - 'DJ Kicks' (Audio CD) Detail - Underground Hip Hop - Store

Damn, nice nice. April's looking pretty good huh. Even already.

So much good music to be excited about in the next few months.

cant wait for cosmogramma... LA is good, 1983 is great too

The cover is nice so I will post it.

http://cdn.pitchfork.com/media/Flyin...art_hi-res.jpg

yeah hes good, i hope cosmogramma is good too

New track previews:

Fikak!: 4 New Tracks from Flying Lotus' Cosmogramma

Despite the fact i think i've heard a total of about 5 2010 albums so far i think Cosmogramma is the pick of the bunch. It's good to have a chillout hip-hop album that doesn't drag but instead flicks between songs within a few minutes, keeping the album fresh. There's this and Four Tet's new one and this gets the award due to that fact.

Really loving Cosmogramma right now.

I've only heard the single 'Computer Face//Pure Being', and it was good. Love the cover, love the vibe- looking forward to the full release.