"Comfort for the Nintendo Generation," is how Steven Ellison, aka Flying Lotus, describes his music. If you have ever played the NES, Super Nintendo, or the Sega Genesis, picture the sounds and music that go along with classics like Galaga, Galaxian, Mario Brothers, or Sonic. Sounds pretty boring, eh? Now add in high tech basslines, unconventional time signatures, and a whole mess of instruments to it and there you have it, Flying Lotus. Steven was raised around music in Los Angeles, and describes himself as always being a very artistic person. His great aunt and uncle were John and Alice Coltrane, two innovative jazz musicians in the 1960's. Since John made it a lot bigger than Alice, she was the major influence in Steven's life. He talks about how he never knew she was a famous musician when he was a youth, until she began touring again decades after John's death. This is when his eyes were opened to the artistic world, and he began a path of his own. At first, he wanted to be a filmmaker, and it was not until about ten years ago that he was asked to go on tour with his Great Aunt to make a documentary about her historic life. In a film about Flying Lotus, he tells a story about how he was in Paris filming this documentary about his Aunt. A cab driver asked the group he was with if they were musicians, and everyone except Steven confirmed this. The cab driver gave a confused look at Steven, then Alice Coltrane stepped in and stated, "He's a musician, right now he just thinks he is a filmmaker." From here on out, Flying Lotus began experimenting with music and beats on his computer. He never thought much of his music until he caught a break with the late night television phenomenon Adult Swim. If there are any fans of Adult Swim out there, think of the awesome music that is played in between shows during the commentaries (the black screen with the funny comments). A large portion of that music is actually Flying Lotus. It was from here on out that Steven began taking his music seriously. The first full length, studio album was released in June, 2008 (NEW ARTIST!!!). It is a great album, seventeen tracks, called Los Angeles. Flying Lotus's studio recordings tend to have more of a relaxed, comforting sound to them, but from the live sets I've heard this is definitely not the case. His live sets are aimed at the club/nightlife fans that are looking for excitement. As he puts it, "If you're going to make an album it should be something that people sit and think about. It can be that engaging experience, not just mindless club music, mindless bass music. Which once again there is a time and place for everything." I have not had the opportunity to see him live yet because I just recently discovered him through an awesome web site called Jus' Like Music. This web site is a wonderful tool for anyone who likes electronic music. Just in the past two weeks of using this site, I have already discovered a plethora of new music, Flying Lotus being one of my new passions. Check him out on myspace, check out Jus' Like Music, you won't be disappointed.
1 comment:
You have basically just solved my 5 year, ongoing, every day mystery of finding out who makes the music on the Adult Swim black screens. I have watched [AS] for a long time and one day it just kind of crept up on me... who makes these songs? It's one of those things that you would think one of your friends would know, or the tv would eventually tell you in some random bit of information that commercials, shows, etc. like to stick into their programs. But no. None of my friends knew, I couldn't find it, and [AS] sure won't tell you. So thanks for solving my (and maybe someone else's) tourturing mystery of the Adult Swim music. I will definitely check it out.
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