Flying Lotus

A recurring mistake by some electronic musicians is the use of too much low end. The music ends up muddy, with bass drum on every beat.

Flying Lotus’s fourth release, “Until The Quiet Comes,” sounds anything but muddy.
FlyLo, real name Steven Ellison, uses the bass drum in rhythmic counterpoint to the melodies on the album. He leaves the responsibility of keeping time to other sounds.

On standout track “Putty Boy Strut,” the understated bass drum sometimes follows the rhythm of the melody, sometimes keeps the time and sometimes does a mixture of both.
It doesn’t have any discernible pattern, which gives the track an extra sense of immediacy to make it the album’s best.

Ellison has said hip-hop producer J Dilla is one of his most important influences, and that is abundantly clear on this record. FlyLo’s hip fusion of futuristic sounds with retro keyboards and vocals is right out of Dilla’s jazz-hop playbook.

By Jacob Klopfenstein