Free Downloads and New Music From Warp Records

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, keyCMND favorite Flying 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.

Watch: Flying Lotus and ∞ Live @ The Echoplex

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 LotusCosmogrammaWarp Records (2010)
Genre: ElectronicRating: A+
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.
-Luke Winkie
Listen:“Computer Face // Pure Being”


Flying Lotus on Last.fm

Flying Lotus
Cosmogramma
Warp Records (2010)

Genre: Electronic
Rating: A+

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.

-Luke Winkie

Listen:
“Computer Face // Pure Being”

Flying Lotus on Last.fm

Flying Lotus’ 4/20 Broadcast is Now!

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…

Free Downloads and New Music From Warp Records
Watch: Flying Lotus and ∞ Live @ The Echoplex
Flying Lotus’ 4/20 Broadcast is Now!

keyCMND's Favorite Music:





























About keyCMND:

KeyCMND aims to provide the most interesting and exciting music, videos, album reviews, and news. We encourage readers to share with us what they're into and would like to read more about. Please use our contact information accordingly.

Please send materials for review or feature consideration here:
keyCMND
Attn: Patric Fallon
1102 York St.
San Francisco, CA 94110

Alternately, you can send emails here:
keycmnd@gmail.com

keyCMND on Facebook
keyCMND on Twitter