Flying Lotus - "Cosmogramma"

It’s the purist in me preventing my approval of the fictional Gorillaz. (Or maybe it’s lingering , decades-long disgust of the fictional Archies knocking ‘Honky Tonk Women’ out of the number one spot with ‘Sugar, Sugar back in 1969.) I just don’t like the idea of fake bands.

And yet, when I play Flying Lotus’ Cosmogramma that’s what I imagine I’m listening to: a fictional band … except it isn’t lotuses making the sounds I’m hearing but metallic winged insects because – this is kind of embarrassing - initially I confused “locust” with “lotus” and so - when I played the first track ‘Clock Catcher - my initial impression was of being surrounded by metallic, metropolitan cicadas. And I can’t shake that image even after playing Cosmogramma almost every day for three weeks.

I’m sure this was my way of compensating for lacking the vocabulary describing what I was hearing, which was disconcerting because I wanted to share my enthusiasm for this very hardcore piece of electronica. So let’s start with the little basics that I can impart to those even less in the know than I.

Flying Lotus is not a band but a producer and laptop musician who is the nephew of jazz pioneers Alice and John Coltrane. Cosmogramma is his third full-length release. The first two 1983 (2006) and Los Angeles (2008) have nothing to do with the Hendrix track and X album. Like Los Angeles before it, Cosmogramma has 17 tracks. They range in length from 1:12 to 4:14 and three tracks feature guests. I don’t care much for the track titles but I do like the sequencing. The album unfolds like a movie soundtrack – perhaps due to the brevity of the opening tracks – and this encourages the sensation I’m listening to a score for an animated film.

Flying Lotus has been called the “Hendrix of his generation” and I heard that before I read that. ‘Clock Catcher’ opens with something sounding like Jimi Hendrix’s backwards tape loops from ‘Are You Experienced?’ from the get go: only voodoo souped up and sharpened by a sonic blacksmith.

And it’s this silvery percussion that is Flying Lotus’ most distinctive sound. In ‘Pickled’ it recedes and serves as the rhythm for a Return To Foreveresque bass lead. It’s the first track of several featuring the jazz elements I expected electronic music from Coltrane’s nephew to have. It’s this jazz element that anchors Flying Lotus’ avant garde electronica, maybe explaining the warm reception this daring music is receiving. NPR’s listeners have even picked Cosmogramma #14 on 2010’s Best Music (So Far) (Not a bad list either, although I still can’t fathom the Gorillaz being #1 even if four of my musical heroes lent their talents to Plastic Beach (i.e., Lou Reed, Mick Jones, Paul Simonon, and Mark E. Smith).

The first up of the featured performances is Radiohead’s Thom Yorke on ‘… And The World Laughs With You’. This is not a total surprise. Flying Lotus opened for Thom Yorke’s solo band in Oakland, California and even played a remix of Radiohead’s ‘Reckoner’ that night. (You can faintly hear hints of ‘Reckoner’ in ‘… And The World Laughs At You’ too.) You can also see footage of various performances of Flying Lotus playing Radiohead’s ‘Idioteque’ on YouTube. I wish he had included it on Cosmogramma instead of just using it as a jumping off point for ‘Satellliiiiiiitee’.

Bassist Stephen “Thundercat” Bruner turns up on the single and video for ‘MmmHmm. (Bruner is formerly of Suicidal Tendencies and can be currently heard on Erykah Badu’s New Amerykah albums.) Here he contributes vocals but it is his basslines on tracks like ‘Pickled!’ that makes him Cosmogramma’s most valuable player The final featured performance is that of vocalist Laura Darlington on ‘Table Tennis’. Darlington has appeared on all three of Flying Lotus’ albums. It’s one of the spacier numbers … drifting … and not subject to the jarring instrumental intrusions heard elsewhere. It sets up nicely the closer ‘Galaxy In Janaki’.

I heartily recommend Cosmogramma if you’re looking to challenge your listening buds. I was on the fence at first but fully embrace it now. When I played M.I.A’s Maya last week, it sounded so dated when compared to Cosmogramma. Choice tracks are ‘Nose Art’, ‘Computer Face/Pure Being’, ‘Arkestry’, ‘Do The Astral Plane’, and ‘Recoiled’. Maybe it has something to do with preconceived notions, but I do prefer the jazzier tracks.

Now if I could only get those metallic locusts out of my head ….