flying lotus: c/d, s/d

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Los Angeles was the best record of 2008 in my opinion.

But I'm sort of a Flying Lotus junkie. I listen to his complete output pretty thoroughly and frequently... but I'm from LA and he's the first local act I'd gotten way excited about in a really long time. Anyway, I have 4 different mixes of his and they are titled as follows:
The Black Fist
Live on Future Roots Radio 1/30/09
Essential Mix on Radio 1
BBC Radio 1 Sept '07

and they are all great.

Don't believe the 1983 disappointment in this thread, that's a really solid album. Grab the following in addition to the above mixes:
1983
Reset EP
Los Angeles
Los Angeles 1x3 EP

Finally, and this can both help or hinder my efforts of persuasion here, but I recently had a nice little streak of using acid once a month for the last 3 months. Every time I just put on a ton of Flying Lotus and it really, really delivered.

1983 kind of sounds like bad downtempo Mr. Oizo. His style wasn't refined enough by that point.

LOVE 'Parisian Goldfish'

album takes a while but when it kicks in it kicks it!

This album really makes me kinda wish that smoking pot didn't have such negative mental health repercussions for me. :-(

Auntie's Lock would go FASTASTIC in one of my nu-gaze-tronica sets

fastastic?

SLOWTASTIC

LA x 3 EP > Los Angeles. Floating on massive bass-driven clouds over gray and turbulent shipping lanes. "Endless White" sounds like Marsen Jules circa "Lazy Sunday Funerals", except better.

i'd been avoiding this dude for some reason, and i haven't heard a whole record (just some random youtube shit and a couple of cuts from the upcoming album), but i'm sold now. seems like he's good at both the post-dilla drum programming thing and the nu-synth thing. his remix of 'reckoner' is great too.

those couple tracks he's done with daedelus' wife are great

but yeah dude's really solid

He mimes his live shows. It's pretty ridiculous. All premixed and he just works the filters and delays, then poses like jesus. I thought the Chemical Bros. and Oakenfold were the bottom of the miming and posing possee but FlyLo is right up there with the worst of them. Either make your entire set live on stage or don't pose when you twist the delay nob.

it's kinda weird to expect these producers to do something that's related to what they do but not at all the same. reminds me of that mitch hedberg thing on comedians & acting, like "if i had worked my ass off to become a really good cook, and you said, 'alright, you're a cook...can you farm?'"

i guess the obvious answer is "don't play live", but it must be tough when you're not making shit off your records and getting offered well-paying gigs.

ive really come around on 'los angeles' too & looking fwd to the new lp

yeah i went from skeptic to total lotus stan in the last few weeks

The real record has leaked already (there was a milquetoast chillout album passed out as the real deal a few days ago). Sounds more busy and saturated than the last one so far, more jazz influence as well. Its hard to take in a single dose tho.

very excited about the new one. RobertaFlack is already one of my favorite tracks all time

I'm seeing him live next week, should be interesting

I think he's incredible live. Best thing I've seen at the SXSW fest in Austin in perhaps 8 years of going (whether that says more about his live show or my being easily impressed, I'm not sure).

Anyway... I'm no superfan (yet anyway), but highest recommendations to the live show.

The live set is good because it's prerecorded except for the delay/filters. He's a poser and a fake on stage. If you want to see a guy posing behind his laptop and twisting a couple knobs with greatly exaggerated movements, go for it.

Cool, can we also please talk about how Ashley Simpson is OMG SOOOO FAKE because she lip-synced on SNL?

Sure, it's a valid comparison.

I'm cool with that sort of thing if he has something visual going on and the live venue has a good sound system.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWvlA5RLuf8 -VS- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RrLAgi_mBY

damn, those knobs be hot.

if you've ever assigned knobs to functions in Abelton Live, you know exactly what's going on in that clip. If you haven't, you think he's actually doing something.

serious question, what is a dude like this supposed to do live? make beats from scratch on the fly?

So "assign[ing] knobs to functions in Abelton Live" =/= "actually doing something"?

i think "faker" is a bit ridiculous as language for this, but what do you like a fly-lo artist to do in this context? live mpc playing? different mixes on the fly?

heh xposting there obv

"performance"

this dude shld ask ppl in the audience if they are having a good time at the show

he shld use his real name when referring to himself and telling anecdotes abt the tour

then say "have any of u assigned knobs in abelton live? if so u no whats going down here"

"but if u havent ur gonna think that if really doing smthn & the joke is on u"

then he can tear his sunglasses off & throw them into the crowd & start blasting the tunes

I can't tell from that clip if he actually is just playing with effects, but I agree that doing some on-the-fly sequencing adds a lot. He's probably doing a little bit of it - when he moves over to the laptop for a second he's likely clicking on the next row of 4 or 8 bar sequences - but using something like this would make a more exciting and genuinely "live" performance: http://lostinmusik.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/novation-launchpad-music-control-surface_1.jpg

oops, that's bigger than I thought.

or this

http://www.snyderphonics.com/products.htm

Unless the audio is off, it seriously doesn't even sound like he's messing around with effects. I mean, I hope I'm wrong, but it really looks like he's just randomly twiddling on the beat and occasionally "cueing" a new sample, but he does it a little late a couple times!

Again, someone please inform us on what he SHOULD be doing during a live set.

How about somebody explain High Places live. Nothing I saw really seemed to match what I heard. I am aware of my ignorance about his equipment and am seriously curious, not just looking for an argument.

It's fine if that's all he does to play his set, but the grandstanding and over the top knob twists annoy me.

why not just bill himself as a dj? then he can just play his own records, including a few unreleased remixes on cdr, plus that nsfw video, plus throw in a few trax by other people?

alternately he could a) get himself a theramin, learn to play it, b) set up a loop player or two and throw random rhythmic sounds played live on a spatula or tin can or whatever, bring them in and out of the mix, c) bring along his fave guest instrumentalist to add some live vibe, d) throw in some live keys every once in a while (or even build up tracks from semi-scratch, again via looping program) or e) or play live drums if he can - this worked great for the ting-ting's live show (no really, i saw them last year and they had a great live show considering how many canned elements there were to each song, simply on the strength of the programmer dude being a v. passable drummer and the energy that brought to the set)

the filter twiddling has it's place in electronica live pa's (it's sort of the equivalent of the cliched pick scratch at the end of a guitar solo) but does make for a pretty stale show if that's all you're ever doing on stage

in that flylo clip above it's a track from 'los angeles', but massively re-worked (new synth lines, tempo changes, etc.). so maybe he prepared it all ahead of time, but at least it's new shit designed for the live show.

folks could just say "his music sounds great in a club with a good sound system" instead of "he is great live"

Well, the music does sound great, yes, but it's also about the *show* -- and whether he is twiddling knobs, creating new beats on the fly or something in between, he's a great performer and plays a very engaging set.

would have been pretty mad had i paid - they were asking $35 for it

he played this, it was ok

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XY0EHSXyk0&feature=youtu.be

try again

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XY0EHSXyk0

damn, that new video is awesome. been wanting to catch his new tour, def gonna grab tix. dude gets close to no love out here in Denver but he keeps coming thru, praise

he projected the video behind himself when he "played" it. the projections were really crisp and the 3d was very impressive

i was disappointed though that overall the 3d animations didn't really have any theme or narrative. as my friend put it, it was a bit ... windows screensaver-y

definitely felt like they were just throwing up whatever 3d animations they had come up with. some of it had an outer space theme, some of it was body horror, some of it was like random 90s cyberdelic stuff, some of it related to his old albums. just a grab bag of random shit.

but yeah, taken piece by piece it was impressive

the opening act was some dude named pbdy who was ... not good

i can't find what he played online anywhere but it was laptop music that sounded like a cross between witch house, modern classical, "weightless" grime and drill and bass. not good, though.

a lot to unpack with this new one . some pretty cool shit so far though

Listening now, so far it seems well within his comfort zone, a lot of familiar off kilter beats and bass riffing, a bit less abrasive than some of his previous work. Very listenable, but not exactly revolutionary.

Haven't listened to the new one yet, but none of the singles got me going (except for Lynch), and I really liked You're Dead!. Honestly I'd like to hear a Thundercat-less FL record again. It's kinda cool how their sounds have become inseparable, but I wonder what he would do on some track without the 'just add Thundercat' plugin.

I always like his Twitter commentaries on the tracks. Love that 'All Spies' is straight-up the music from the Spy vs Spy NES game.

Liking the 2nd half of the record a lot

More spacious, the Solange track is really nice

i fuckin love flying lotus

are you a spy mister?

Re-listening to jonwayne's debut 'Bowser' and it holds up, such well-written tracks and rich video game synths. Better than all the retro-sounding indie game soundtracks around today. Probably my favorite non-FlyLo record to come out of the Low End Theory scene (along with Bad Vibes, and the first Teebs album).
https://open.spotify.com/album/2SURtVuzzUeELq1yAEWodw?si=DX-TRlTxQtehMBrMmfLy6Q

I love the part in the Stones Throw doc where jonwayne rolls out of bed and like immediately smokes a j and starts working on beats.