walking upstream…
Flying Lotus
photo: kolby ari · cc by-sa 4.0 ↗Flying Lotus
sourcesWikipedia2 · Bandcamp Daily
Steven Ellison built his early beats from a bedroom in Los Angeles before founding the Brainfeeder label in 2008, turning a loose scene of beatmakers, singers and jazz players — Thundercat foremost among them — into one of the 2010s' most influential musical hubs. His own albums, especially 2010's Cosmogramma, fuse chopped hip-hop rhythm, free-jazz harmony and glitching electronics into dense, emotionally raw suites, a sound shaped directly by the death of both his mother and his great-aunt, jazz harpist and spiritual teacher Alice Coltrane. Also a filmmaker and the rapper Captain Murphy, Ellison has spent two decades blurring the line between beat music, jazz and the avant-garde.
the sound in question
2014
Never Catch MeFlying Lotus
walk the tributaries ↓
Alice Coltrane1970s · Spiritual jazz / Jazz / Devotional music
Ellison is the great-nephew of Alice Coltrane, and has called her the single biggest influence on his music; when she died in 2007 he was listening to a recording of her speaking about the 'cosmic drama' of death, misheard it as 'cosmogramma,' and built his breakthrough 2010 album of that name partly as a tribute, sampling her harp directly on 'Drips//Auntie's Harp.'
listen: upstream & here
1970
Blue NileAlice Coltrane
2010
Drips//Auntie's HarpFlying Lotus
listen forPlay Alice Coltrane's rippling, meditative harp feature 'Blue Nile' next to Flying Lotus's 'Drips//Auntie's Harp,' which threads a sample of that very recording through skittering drums and synth glitches — a grandnephew literally weaving his great-aunt's instrument into his own sound.
J Dilla2000s · Hip hop / Instrumental hip hop / Neo soul / Jazz rap
Ellison interned at the Stones Throw label in the mid-2000s, where he crossed paths with J Dilla shortly before Dilla's death; early critics reflexively filed Ellison's first beat tapes as working in the 'shadow' of Dilla, Madlib and Dabrye before Los Angeles (2008) broke him free of the comparison.
listen: upstream & here
2006
Time: The Donut of the HeartJ Dilla
2008
GNG BNGFlying Lotus
listen forPlay Dilla's woozy, off-the-grid chop-up 'Time: The Donut of the Heart' next to Flying Lotus's sample-collaged 'GNG BNG' — both build a whole track out of soul fragments that never quite lock into a rigid grid, letting the drums breathe instead of snapping to it.
DJ Shadow1990s · Trip hop / Turntablism
DJ Shadow's entirely sample-built Endtroducing..... circulated as foundational listening in the underground beat scene — LA's Low End Theory night among its clubhouses — that Ellison came up through, establishing that an instrumental record assembled from other people's records could carry the emotional weight of a full album.
listen: upstream & here
1996
Midnight in a Perfect WorldDJ Shadow
2010
Zodiac ShitFlying Lotus
listen forCompare the moody, orchestral-sample sweep of Shadow's 'Midnight in a Perfect World' with Flying Lotus's collaged, mood-shifting 'Zodiac Shit' — both let cinematic, half-buried samples do the emotional work a live band normally would.