Posted at 18:29h
in
Music,
Reviews
Flying Lotus raised the height of his electro-sonic game when he released in May this year his second full-length album Cosmogramma on Warp records, an unusual album through-in and through-out its content, style and visual form (with artwork by Leigh J. McCloseky, look up Codex Tor!).
Cosmogramma is constructed by 17 pieces, from 17 seconds to 3 minutes 20 sections; each piece titled and punctuated by unexpected wording ('Pickled!' , 'Nose Art', 'Table tennis', etc). This is not a new feature of Flying Lotus' touch however, rather it is the mark of his ever productive bend, present and evolving ever since his first dubsteps. As random as these uncategorisable tiny timed pieces and their longer siblings appear at first, they always self-audio explain their unique character as soon as you will hit play, thus falling tightly snug into the seat-beat that Flying Lotus has composed, for them, and in them.
Cosmogramma is a space opera, thus has Warp records presented it. When it was released to the press it was handed as a one long play, a very fitting format because, although dividable in the said 17 parts, each track runs inside and outside of its selves, like natural phrases in the logic of poetics rather than synthetic broken units.
Haven't listened to it yet? Let us tempt you...
Sometimes the hardest thing to do when you look back at a unique situation is to assess its true impact. It is possible to mould the evidence to fit in with whatever narrative you ultimately choose.
Such is the case with the L.A. Riots of 1992: you either believe it was a turning point in the ever-evolving civil rights movement or merely a dark spot in American history where the opportunistic underclass exercised some "aggressive shopping." You can argue either way because you can cherry pick flash points to illuminate your point. The truth is, to view it either way would be simplistic at best because it indeed had elements of both.
Conservative radio host and right-wing firebrand Rush Limbaugh bluntly said that "the Los Angeles riots were not caused by the Rodney King verdict. The Los Angeles riots were caused by rioters," thereby removing any possible justification for the senseless acts. While many called the riots a means of "fighting back" against an oppressive system, how much was motivated by the actual Rodney King verdict? How much was motivated by chaos and opportunism? How much has changed since?
There are mixed answers to these questions, and Mark Ford’s incendiary new VHI documentary film Uprising: Hip-Hop and the LA riots merely flirts with them.
Los Angeles hailing singer/songwriter Jhene Aiko [pronounced juh-nay ahh-ee-ko], 23, first emerged on the R&B scene at a young age whilst signed to Epic Records alongside the likes of B2K and Omarion, whom she met at elementary school. “LA is a city of entertainment, so everybody ends up meeting each other so you run into everybody. I think the entertainment business is like a high school,” she says.