New Flying Lotus album “You’re Dead!”

Flying Lotus' You're dead!

Fly­ing Lotus’ You’re dead!

If secret­ly, in a hid­den cor­ner of your psy­che kept secret­ly secret­ed just for you, you qui­et­ly sus­pect that that man that young mas­ter Zim­mer­man riles against with such sav­age enthu­si­asm on the first of those three extra­or­di­nary albums from 1966 is star­ing back at you from that mir­ror. And that some­how, inex­plic­a­bly, you’ve mor­phed into Jones, Mis­ter, then this is the album to dis­play so loud­ly and with such pride at the head of your playlist.

In his guise as Fly­ing Lotus Steven Elli­son is the man respon­si­ble for keep­ing U2 and Radio­head awake at night as they toss and turn in their tor­tured desire to stay rel­e­vant. Thom Yorke was actu­al­ly a guest vocal­ist on Flylo’s – as he’s inevitably been dubbed – last cou­ple of albums, the break­through Cos­mo­gram­ma from 2010 and Until the Qui­et Comes in 2012, reviewed ear­li­er here.

Flylo gets grilled by Thom Yorke.

Fly­lo gets grilled by Thom Yorke.

You’re Dead! is his fifth album, and it’s effort­less­ly, daz­zling­ly rel­e­vant, and almost casu­al­ly if tri­umphant­ly cur­rent. Nom­i­nal­ly a con­cept album, it’s as much an explo­ration of the tex­ture and feel of sounds as it is of the idea and real­i­ty of death.

That excla­ma­tion mark, so often so irri­tat­ing­ly redun­dant, here hits the nail on the head, as they point out on their review on Pitch­fork here, where it gets an 8.3.

The album man­ages to be at once light and airy, and yet clear­ly con­tem­pla­tive as it con­sid­ers and pon­ders the inevitable. The art work per­fect­ly cap­tures that lightheavy, trip­py dip­py sense of hap­py res­ig­na­tion pro­pelled and punc­tu­at­ed by the rhythms and ten­sions of 21st cen­tu­ry hip hop.

Elli­son is quite sim­ply the man, and this my friend is where it’s at. You can see the video for Nev­er Catch Me fea­tur­ing Kendrick Lamar here.

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