Flamagra - Flying Lotus: Review
Steve Ellison
better known as Flying Lotus is a Los Angeles based producer and rapper as well as the founder of Brainfeeder records. He first garnered critical acclaim and praise from indie, electronica and hip hop fans with his wild 2010 album Cosmogramma. Since then he has dropped two more albums including 2014's much loved You're Dead and the long absence since then has made this new record one of the most anticipated in all of music this year.
Review By Lavender:
Flying Lotus is one of the best artists of the 2000's. I have been a fan for years and it is because of his sharp and unique take on instrumental hip hop and abstract electronica. He has been an incredibly influential sound that has been attempted but never truly duplicated and even though not all of his albums are a sharp 10/10 he has been a spectacularly consistent artist for years. Unfortunately while he retains a lot of his sharp sound play on Flamagra a lot of what made previous works so cohesive is gone.
Some of the singles released on the road to this project foreshadowed the strange lack of sonic consistency it would display throughout. Fire Is Coming is probably the one track here that could get me the most excited and it was released as crazy lead single. A spoken word song with David Lynch of all people narrating is such an exciting prospect and the song is fittingly haunting and dizzying. I love this track quite a bit for both its strange story and compelling musical background and I wish FlyLo had gotten this experimental more times across the project. A handful of the tracks here feature some surprise guests or regular collaborators and really hit it out of the park. More was an excellent and multifaceted single that features Anderson Paak who is as sharp as ever. The first section features some very natural instrumentation and warm backing vocals before transitioning into a sharp drum kick and some absolute bars from Paak. The final passage of the track transitions into a smooth R&B piece that ties everything together.
Burning Down The House features a sharp but surprisingly haunting vocal features from George Clinton. The "I Know Something They Don't" refrain is really cool and a big highlight of what is a pretty good track overall. Spontaneous is a sweet little tune featuring Little Dragon that served as one of the albums singles. The song it brief and pretty catchy and while not necessarily a standout moment the track manages to be good while it's on.
The two best feature tracks on the album land back to back towards the alums midpoint. Yellow Belly isn't my favorite instrumental here but surprisingly Tierra Whack delivers my favorite feature. She brings personality in spades with hilarious and zany bars that match the strange soundplay FlyLo meets her bars with. And right after this Denzel Curry gives us a series of bars over the Black Balloons Reprise. The beat is lowkey and hypnotic and lets Curry do what he does best and perform an excellent series of bars that ties the song up well.
Thundercat features on The Climb and the two longtime collaborators craft what is essentially a great Thundercat song that could go toe to toe with anything on any of the records in his discography. And finally Solange features on the gorgeous and compelling Land Of Honey towards the end of the tracklist. It's a dreamy and dramatic yet soft and hypnotic track that could have almost fit into Solange's album earlier this year. Even though the track fizzles out in its second half Solange gives a fantastic performance and they keys that FlyLo introduces in the middle of the track have been stuck in my head all week.
Features aren't the only way FlyLo crafts good songs though, there are a handful of great solo cuts here. Heroes is a solid instrumental track that has all the elements of classic Flying Lotus with zany vocal samples and a wild pulsating beat that serves its purpose as an introductory song. Post Requisite is another great track with some warbled bass and dizzying effects that makes it one of the most interesting and intoxicating tracks here and one that stayed with me long after I had heard the rest of the project. Takashi is the longest track here and unfortunately doesn't contain a surprise 6ix9ine feature. The song is incredibly dancy for how uptempo it is and reaches a bright and shimmery climax that makes its nearly six minute runtime feel worthwhile. The album ends off on a great track Thank U Malcolm that is one of the hardest bangers here. It has a crazy build that rattles up to a heavy climax and is a sound I could have used a little bit more of across the album.
Unfortunately while the album has a lot of good tracks here there are plenty of just barely listenable ones. Not all of the features hit it out of the park, 9 Carrots is a decent song with a zany instrumental and a measured vocal performance from Toro Y Moi that is poorly mixed and doesn't really support the song. Actually Virtual contains a features from Shabazz Palaces that I was quite excited for but ultimately it is a decent song and decent performance that just don't belong together. Ishmael's lyrical and lowkey bars just don't mesh with FlyLo's driving beat and the rapid keys that hang right in the front of the mix.
And given just how many tracks here not all of the full songs are hits. Capillaries and Debbie Is Depressed are two tracks I have flipped back and forth on and I'm still not sure if they are any good or even belong here. Cap is a unique track that has some very natural sounding piano that clashes with the sound of the album as well as a lot of the samples laced within this very song. Debbie I am more confident in my dislike of with a terribly out of place vocal sample and just a generally underwritten instrumental.
So we've talked about 15 of the songs 27 tracks so far because like many of FlyLo's albums much of what's here is short soundscapes that briefly explore ideas and move on quick, These are usually supportive moments to the albums overall sound but on Flamagra not only are they not sonically consistent but also less effective than ever before. While there are some highlights like Pilgrim Side Eye, Remind U and Say Something it would be tedious and pointless to talk about all of these tracks that either introduce a great idea and are done with it before it can really make any kind of impression, or not even have a good idea to begin with.
Flamagra has it's bright spots and quite a few of them but it lacks the consistency of a Flying Lotus album. It reminds me a TON of the Gorillaz 2016 album Humanz. Both are full of highlights and great features, beats and instrumentals, but both lack the thematic and sonic consistency that people anticipate from both acts. Just like Humanz if there wasn't a name with such high expectations attached to this album people would probably be looking much more positively on it but expectations will be what they are. This isn't the fantastic record You're Dead was and it certainly isn't the masterpiece Cosmogramma was but the album contains a lot of good tracks for all its inconsistencies. Unfortunately it lacks a full albums worth of cohesion that usually elevates FlyLo projects but what is here is more often good than not. 7/10
Review By Lavender:
Flying Lotus is one of the best artists of the 2000's. I have been a fan for years and it is because of his sharp and unique take on instrumental hip hop and abstract electronica. He has been an incredibly influential sound that has been attempted but never truly duplicated and even though not all of his albums are a sharp 10/10 he has been a spectacularly consistent artist for years. Unfortunately while he retains a lot of his sharp sound play on Flamagra a lot of what made previous works so cohesive is gone.
Some of the singles released on the road to this project foreshadowed the strange lack of sonic consistency it would display throughout. Fire Is Coming is probably the one track here that could get me the most excited and it was released as crazy lead single. A spoken word song with David Lynch of all people narrating is such an exciting prospect and the song is fittingly haunting and dizzying. I love this track quite a bit for both its strange story and compelling musical background and I wish FlyLo had gotten this experimental more times across the project. A handful of the tracks here feature some surprise guests or regular collaborators and really hit it out of the park. More was an excellent and multifaceted single that features Anderson Paak who is as sharp as ever. The first section features some very natural instrumentation and warm backing vocals before transitioning into a sharp drum kick and some absolute bars from Paak. The final passage of the track transitions into a smooth R&B piece that ties everything together.
Burning Down The House features a sharp but surprisingly haunting vocal features from George Clinton. The "I Know Something They Don't" refrain is really cool and a big highlight of what is a pretty good track overall. Spontaneous is a sweet little tune featuring Little Dragon that served as one of the albums singles. The song it brief and pretty catchy and while not necessarily a standout moment the track manages to be good while it's on.
The two best feature tracks on the album land back to back towards the alums midpoint. Yellow Belly isn't my favorite instrumental here but surprisingly Tierra Whack delivers my favorite feature. She brings personality in spades with hilarious and zany bars that match the strange soundplay FlyLo meets her bars with. And right after this Denzel Curry gives us a series of bars over the Black Balloons Reprise. The beat is lowkey and hypnotic and lets Curry do what he does best and perform an excellent series of bars that ties the song up well.
Thundercat features on The Climb and the two longtime collaborators craft what is essentially a great Thundercat song that could go toe to toe with anything on any of the records in his discography. And finally Solange features on the gorgeous and compelling Land Of Honey towards the end of the tracklist. It's a dreamy and dramatic yet soft and hypnotic track that could have almost fit into Solange's album earlier this year. Even though the track fizzles out in its second half Solange gives a fantastic performance and they keys that FlyLo introduces in the middle of the track have been stuck in my head all week.
Features aren't the only way FlyLo crafts good songs though, there are a handful of great solo cuts here. Heroes is a solid instrumental track that has all the elements of classic Flying Lotus with zany vocal samples and a wild pulsating beat that serves its purpose as an introductory song. Post Requisite is another great track with some warbled bass and dizzying effects that makes it one of the most interesting and intoxicating tracks here and one that stayed with me long after I had heard the rest of the project. Takashi is the longest track here and unfortunately doesn't contain a surprise 6ix9ine feature. The song is incredibly dancy for how uptempo it is and reaches a bright and shimmery climax that makes its nearly six minute runtime feel worthwhile. The album ends off on a great track Thank U Malcolm that is one of the hardest bangers here. It has a crazy build that rattles up to a heavy climax and is a sound I could have used a little bit more of across the album.
Unfortunately while the album has a lot of good tracks here there are plenty of just barely listenable ones. Not all of the features hit it out of the park, 9 Carrots is a decent song with a zany instrumental and a measured vocal performance from Toro Y Moi that is poorly mixed and doesn't really support the song. Actually Virtual contains a features from Shabazz Palaces that I was quite excited for but ultimately it is a decent song and decent performance that just don't belong together. Ishmael's lyrical and lowkey bars just don't mesh with FlyLo's driving beat and the rapid keys that hang right in the front of the mix.
And given just how many tracks here not all of the full songs are hits. Capillaries and Debbie Is Depressed are two tracks I have flipped back and forth on and I'm still not sure if they are any good or even belong here. Cap is a unique track that has some very natural sounding piano that clashes with the sound of the album as well as a lot of the samples laced within this very song. Debbie I am more confident in my dislike of with a terribly out of place vocal sample and just a generally underwritten instrumental.
So we've talked about 15 of the songs 27 tracks so far because like many of FlyLo's albums much of what's here is short soundscapes that briefly explore ideas and move on quick, These are usually supportive moments to the albums overall sound but on Flamagra not only are they not sonically consistent but also less effective than ever before. While there are some highlights like Pilgrim Side Eye, Remind U and Say Something it would be tedious and pointless to talk about all of these tracks that either introduce a great idea and are done with it before it can really make any kind of impression, or not even have a good idea to begin with.
Flamagra has it's bright spots and quite a few of them but it lacks the consistency of a Flying Lotus album. It reminds me a TON of the Gorillaz 2016 album Humanz. Both are full of highlights and great features, beats and instrumentals, but both lack the thematic and sonic consistency that people anticipate from both acts. Just like Humanz if there wasn't a name with such high expectations attached to this album people would probably be looking much more positively on it but expectations will be what they are. This isn't the fantastic record You're Dead was and it certainly isn't the masterpiece Cosmogramma was but the album contains a lot of good tracks for all its inconsistencies. Unfortunately it lacks a full albums worth of cohesion that usually elevates FlyLo projects but what is here is more often good than not. 7/10
Best Track: Fire Is Coming
For more abstract hip hop check out my review of Injury Reserve's Injury Reserve here.
