Flying Lotus’ new LP Until The Quiet Comes is about to hit play the world over. Shaped as a 46 minutes opus of jazz-fusion, this fourth album is so daring and so complete it can only be qualified as a masterpiece.
Steve Ellison, West Coast craftsman of electro experiments, has produced an album built on 18 separate units but with each sonic piece flowing in and out of the other in liquid form. The LP’s cover artwork is the perfect visual metaphor for the auditory world Until the Quiet Comes is about to open; the entire album is colourful, serene and disturbing, buoyant and bluesy.
Offering quite a feast, the album is created on short intro and outro sections and full length tracks. The opener, “All In” begins with chimes and drums floating on waves of trills and peaks, which dissolve into bumping beats for Niki Randa’s mellifluous voice in “Getting There,” who sings on pearls of scintillating bells.
There are grand guest appearances as anticipated; with “DMT Song” featuring Thundercat, who was also present on FlyLo’s prior album Cosmogramma. “See Thru to U” is sung by Erykah Badu, who not only fits the environment created by Flying Lotus; she naturally belongs there – with a track so experimentally audacious, it mixes a full range of rhythms, brass and strings, lightly shaking a distorted jazz.
Thom Yorke also appears on “Electric Candyman,” a Lotus mantra blues, having previously featured on Cosmogramma’s “…And the World Laughs with you,” whilst Laura Darlington – also part of Cosmogramma – returns here to vocally paint a dreamy realm in violin filled “Phantasm.”
Listen: Flying Lotus f/ Thom Yorke – “Electric Candyman”
The short fragments of this LP are just as intense as, if not more than, the full songs; “Heave(n)” is a hip hop sequence of bumping beats rhythm-ed by the fragile breath of a flute and “All the Secrets” is jazz-infused by syncopated lines of piano and drumming blues. The title track is filled with controlled explosions of cymbals, heartbeat beats, light electro spoon-claps and drops of synths, while the tiny 1 min 52 “Sultans Request” steps in loud and bumpy. Time to let in bass.
The video for “Putty Boy Strut” was just released, and it is such a peculiar track, unique in the set and clearly stands out of the whole. Directed by Cyriak, a British animator known for his slightly unsettling imagination, the video shows Putty Boy feeding on jazz beats and harmonies so that he can be reborn as a metallic butterfly high on violin-strings. Crazy? No, Steve Ellison vision.
Full length tracks are veritable explorations. “Tiny Tortures” rides on bamboo-soft tribal beats, while the electro-drunk “The Nightcaller” R-n-Bees the pace on urgent synths. The most beautiful and remarkable track to my ears is “Hunger” featuring Niki Randa – the best track of the lot bearing two parts; a longing, and the winged reply of a guitar.
Flying Lotus is a phenomenal creator and producer and the result of Until the Quiet Comes is a blooming full jazz orchestral piece – because beneath it all, it is the awesome, volatile, all-enveloping power of Jazz we’re talking about.
Flying Lotus – Until the Quiet Comes
Label: Warp Records
UK release: October 01/02, 2012
Buy: iTunes / Amazon
Tracklist
01. All In
02. Getting There [ft. Niki Randa]
03. Until the Colours Come
04. Heave(n)
05 Tiny Tortures
06. All the Secrets
07. Sultans Request
08. Putty Boy Strut
09. See Thru to U [ft. Erykah Badu]
10. Until the Quiet Comes
11. DMT Song [ft. Thundercat]
12. The Nightcaller
13. Only if You Wanna
14. Electric Candyman [ft. Thom Yorke]
15. Hunger [ft. Niki Randa]
16. Phantasm [ft. Laura Darlington]
17. me Yesterday//Corded
18. Dream to Me
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