Massive UK-based electronic and indie music label Warp Records is hooking everybody up with free tunes today.
Affiliated online music retailer Bleep partnered up with the Barcelona music festival Sonar to launch a series of free MP3 downloads, which feature fellow UK-based artists that will be playing the music festival and their exclusive tunes. Among the list is Hudson Mohawke, Broadcast, The Blessings, Roska, and Fuck Buttons, the latter two of which are available now, here. Also premiering today is a new track from IDM pioneers Autechre’s forthcoming ten-song release, Move of Ten. Stream the song “y7” over here.
On a related note, keyCMNDfavoriteFlying Lotus also hooked the world up with an unreleased piece of music, called “Heave (n),” which is only available to hear streaming in that player up top.
If you’re at all like us, you spent last weekend wishing you lived just a bit closer to Southern California (if only for two days). On May 14 and 15 at The Echoplex in Los Angeles, Steven Ellison celebrated the released of his (inter)stellar new album as Flying Lotus, keyCMND favorite Cosmogramma. We would’ve given up just about anything to catch the premiere of his new audio/visual show, and we probably shouldn’t tell you what we were willing to do see him play with a live band, dubbed ∞.
Thankfully, no drastic measures were taken, because the great people at Glenjamn captured the magic for us and threw it up on Youtube. Now we can watch Ellison and his band of merry music makers flesh out jazzy renditions of his tunes without promising to hand over our first born. Check out some live footage above, with more FlyLo video goodness here.
Flying Lotus mastermind Steven Ellison is a total weirdo. He drops massive discombobulated beats, he obsessively divides up his albums into a number of sundry tracks, completely eliminating any hope for potential singles, and he’s unthinkably—almost irresponsibly—brilliant. 2008’s Los Angeles—completely diverse and bludgeoning in its uniqueness—proved a hard act to follow, but the 17-track, near hour-long Cosmogramma is all that and more. FlyLo’s productions are more complex, more surprising, and, of course, much weirder.
Here, Flying Lotus incorporates more influences into his music than ever before: jazz instrumentation, symphonic orchestration, and even a little downtempo elevator music. It’s all kept within the realms of the beat-heavy styles apparent on Los Angeles, but there are times when you ask yourself what exactly you’re dancing to. The franticly elastic bass solo on “Pickled!” or the chugging, hollow drum fill and film noir-esque brass perks on “Arkestry” don’t necessarily scream “club music,” just as a guest spot from Thom Yorke isn’t a “futuristic hip-hop” trademark, and yet there they are.
Even Cosmogramma’s more acoustic pieces—like the groovy, AM radio interlude “German Haircut” or the lush orchestral movements in “Intro: A Cosmic Drama”—all sound surprisingly natural next to woofer cookers like “Zodiac Shit” and “Computer Face // Pure Being,” which employ some of Flying Lotus’ patented psychedelic, brain-driven hip-hop. Everything is in its right place. Throughout his album, Ellison manages to piece together each of his influences in a way that somehow lacks any stitch. It takes an honest effort to find apparent sonic turns in theme, even with the erratic starts and stops, and that’s something very few artists can achieve.
It seems Ellison has gone about his career constantly asking himself how far he could go with his productions while still making danceable music. He’s tampered plenty with sample-based hip-hop. He’s boiled down electronic music to its core, and reassembled the elements holding only his own blueprints. His latest experiment is a wildly creative array of diverse elements far from the recipes of anything resembling today’s club music; Cosmogramma is proof that Flying Lotus’ musical hypotheses are cutting edge sonic science—weird science.
Jamie Lidell’s latest effort, Compass, is a record of collaborations with the likes of Beck, Feist, Chris Taylor of Grizzly Bear, Gonzales, and Pat Sansone of Wilco, along with Lidell’s unmistakable singing style, funky bass work, smooth slow jams, synthetic and acoustic percussion, and wonky pitch-shifted vocals. It’s an album by an artist stepping out on a limb, though he didn’t have to, and who ought be rewarded for taking his craft into the unknown to create a wildly entertaining, engaging, and complex record.
Compass begins with “Completely Exposed,” and in this opening track, Lidell and company have created, hands down, one of the most exciting sonic experiences of this year. Before the song really starts moving, around the thirty-second mark, a tension builds amidst crackling percussion, sneakily smooth keys, and Lidell’s rising voice before the floodgates open and a barrage of sound—comprised of countless unique noises that fit together precisely like some strange puzzle—is unloaded onto the listener, all of it chaotic, interesting, and absolutely wonderful. It’s a fitting introduction to the highs, lows, and everywhere-in-betweens that lie in the forthcoming 14 tracks that make up Compass.
The album is a departure from what could be described—after listening to Compass and then going back to 2008’s Jim—as Lidell’s cleaner, pervious sound. Compass is an all-around dirtier record, but in the most positive of ways. There is more distortion everywhere, and the songs have a general feeling of having been written, torn apart, and pieced back together with the scraps that were left. In “Coma Chameleon,” Lidell’s vocals seem to peak into the red at times, the drums are constant and fuzzy, and the horns that make small, calculated appearances are full of attitude and a general aura of bad-ass; the song’s perfectly placed saxophone solo is gone before it really has time to be appreciated, which makes a good solo great.
Lidell and his crew of producers and high-profile collaborators have created a finished product that is, at times, bright and optimistic, as on “Enough’s Enough.” At other times, though, Compass is dark and introspective, as is the case with near album ender “Big Drift.” But regardless of whether the songs are light or dark or any number of other adjectives one could use, or whether they are distortion-laden and drum-driven or clean and piano-based, every song is full of soul. And, in the end, that’s what makes Compass both unique and no different from any other record Lidell has made.
An understatement to be sure, Gonjasufi’s debut album, A Sufi and a Killer, is weird. Indubitably, it’s the rare record that incorporates desultory, outré, and occasionally straight-up unnatural elements into something that somehow resists even the most reductive attempts of categorizing. We’ve got fractured soul, goth-leaning post-punk, chintzy, primordial electro, and a dash of Gil Scott-Heron’s brand of half-sung proto-rap all surprisingly solidified into an album that not only bewilders, but sounds absolutely natural and impeccably structured, which—given it’s array of disparate influences and disjointed sonic elements—is totally weird.
All that being said, what really elevates A Sufi and a Killer—from experimentation up to a fully-formed idea—is Gonjasufi’s own tattered, ghoulish voice. On practically every one of the 19 tracks (produced by such LA beat scene luminaries as Flying Lotus and The Gaslamp Killer), he delivers yearning and strained verses—periodically about the entirely uncool and heady topic of mortality. “My body finally starts to decay,” he unravels on “Love of Reign.” The singer seems almost obsessed with the ugly side of death—never letting any hopeful spirituality or friendly ghost-isms sneak through.
A Sufi and a Killer is easily one of the most original albums that will be released this year; it literally sounds like nothing else on the market. That might sound naïve at first, but once the dusty, haunted world created on A Sufi gets a hold of your brain, it’s undeniable. Gonjasufi is nearing something great. His classic is already visible on the horizon, and this album designates himself as a true innovator. Now, all he must do is follow that innovation to its logical, and beautiful conclusion.
When the new album from Flying Lotus was announced, it was given the wholly appropriate release date of April 20, 2010. It’s no secret producer Steven Ellison is an avid smoker, and one could safely assume that at least over half of his contingent share in the particular pastime. So a little bit of wind was taken out of our sails when we discovered Cosmogramma had been pushed back for release on Warp Records in early May, but fear not: FlyLo is celebrating the unofficial holiday in other ways.
Over on flying-lotus.com, among a few other associated websites, a special online 4/20 broadcast is playing live now. Fans are encouraged to come check out the tunes, converse in the wacky chat room, pre-order their copy Cosmogramma with a special print drawn by Ellison himself, enter in a contest to win the original art piece, and listen for exclusive previews off the forthcoming Flying Lotus album. It has to be one of the more awesome ways you could spend 4/20. It’s certainly better than watching The Big Lebowski for the twentieth time with a bag of Kettle Chips and your cat. And who knows what kind of insanity will transpire when the magic hour strikes?! Tune in and find out…
With a double a-side single, the Warp label introduces Eprom and Eskmo, two producers who not only live in the same city, but also belong to the same lazer bass, dubstep, glitch-hop world. Like fellow San Franciscans Lazer Sword or LA futurists The Glitch Mob, Eprom and Eskmo both rely heavily on slow-moving beats, distorted sub-bass, and wonky electronic noise to flesh out their productions. The songs on this joint release reflect the two sides of the dubstep coin: hard-hitting, club-ready tunes and soulful, poignant space-ballads.
“Hendt,” by Eprom, takes the head-knocking route with a bass hook that’ll rattle your skull and a beat meant to wake the dead. While Eskmo’s “Lands & Bones” track is just about as equally crunchy, its rough edges are smoothed over by a dreamy vocal performance from LA’s Swan and an inclination towards the kind of reverberated melodies found in Nosaj Thing’s repertoire. Each track is reminiscent of the producers’ peers, which could be said for most dubstep artists, and yet retain enough varied tones and studio tricks to squeeze past any notions of plagiarism. It will be interesting to hear fuller bodies of work from Eprom and Eskmo both.
If you had some worry that Autechre was going to sacrifice any of their tech-fuzz oddities with the new decade, Oversteps should be a reassurance. Always one to attract the far-fringed contingent of the dance music scene, Sean Booth and Rob Brown’s new record is just as crooked as before; mystifying breakbeats, big washes of austere strings, bubbly, bare-bone synths consistently hovering just below the crackly beat. This is Autechre alright.
Like the rest of their career, Oversteps is inherently focused on album aesthetics, transmitting a dark, unfriendly environment over its hour-long trajectory. The unbridled ferocity of the noise freakouts (“r ess,” “O=0,” and the like) poke their head through the rave quite a few times, never letting the listener get complacent with the coma-throb shimmying beats—always having far more in common with Aphex Twin than Daft Punk. When they do allow everyone to get on the floor (as on “known(1),” “qplay,” and “see on see”), it’s through the cerebral urging of counterpoint bass-trembles and gravedigging keyboard plunks.
It’s actually pretty amazing how, nearly two decades after its inception, Autechre continue to be the one of the most forward-thinking electronic acts on the scene. They still make dancing to thunderstorms, coral-reef chimes, and twisted, inside-out time signatures seem second nature. You couldn’t say Booth and Brown are as fresh as they once were, but you’re unlikely to hear many 2010 producers mustering up much better.
Getting any sort of material from the elusive duo of Sean Booth and Rob Brown (collectively known as Autechre) is cause for celebration, especially when albums are usually three years apart and there’s just about no word from the producers in the meantime. So this all comes as sort of a one-two punch: Autechre will be releasing their tenth album, Oversteps, March 22 on the long-standing Warp Records, and the duo just contributed a DJ mix to FACT Magazine in anticipation of the new full-length.
The mix is just about exactly what you’d expect from Autechre trying to make people dance—wonky electronics washing over bubbling techno all ran amidst leftfield hip-hop jams with bits of “WTF?!” moments peppered in for posterity. Booth and Brown held out on a playlist for their genre-jumping mix (though we make out plenty of Stones Throw cuts and some Wu-Tang affiliates among other well-known classics), citing “it’s just some tunes [they] like,” but, really, there are enough effects and tracks running simultaneously to just about nullify any kind of average tracklisting. Check out the free mix here, and the details for Overstepshere.
Everybody, hold on to your fitted caps! It seems our favorite LA-based, ganga-lovin’ beatsmith, Flying Lotus (duh!), is about to blow our minds once again with some new official releases. Over on the Stones Throw website we are told of a new series of 10” releases available now called The Do-Over. Producer Steven Ellison, along with new-comer House Shoes, are compiling one track each for the first installment. Each edition of the vinyl series is limited to 1,000 copies that come complete with crazy cool artwork and extra-special packaging (as seen above) by a different designer every go-around.
A quick trip over to the Brainfeeder website also reveals a new mix coming out called A Decade of Flying Lotus, which is mixed by fellow LA party-starter Gaslamp Killer, and purported to include some previously unheard material by FlyLo. Though, we must say, what excites us the most is the brief mention of Ellison’s new album for Warp, entitled Cosmogramma. Not much else is available on the forthcoming Lotus record other than it will be released on 4/20 (duh!). Now we all have even more reason to celebrate the nationally unrecognized holiday. Below you can check out a new tune by Flying Lotus lifted off the 2010 compilation from Warp.
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Everybody, hold on to your fitted caps! It seems our favorite LA-based, ganga-lovin’ beatsmith, 
