Flying Lotus – Roundhouse, London
The laptop genius brings his mind-bending music of the spheres to Camden
Words Steph Kretowicz
Peacemaker Flying Lotus (aka Steven Ellison) once broke up a fight between some of this writer’s girlfriends in Australia in 2008. Shrieks and hair pulling abounded before the chivalrous laptop genius and lover of women stepped in and bid them give peace a chance. The Roundhouse in London is a distinctly different environment from said hole-in-the-wall alternative venue on the Antipodean west coast, but the sentiment running through Ellison’s music remains the same. Press and general admission are rightly separated by a balcony and barriers as the real FlyLo lovers push forward at ground zero to be hustled by bouncers and occasionally carried away, while the man of the minute bids security to “please be nice to the girls” because they never come to his shows. This reviewer’s ovaries beg to differ, but we’ll concede there’s a certain cerebral masculinity to Ellison’s post hip-hop, pop music pastiches that could imply a lack of what you might call sentimentality — had his most recent effort, 2010’s Cosmogramma, not been injected with so much soul. While comparable electronic experimentalist, Californian Gaslamp Killer, tends to skip the main artery and shoot straight for the brain, Ellison’s work is as much an affectionate tribute to his past and present as it is an empirical study in art and its effects on the humble neurotransmitter.
Looking celestial on a vast stage that resembles Superman’s Fortress of Solitude, Ellison preaches his gospel of avant garde, cross-genre mutation, and it seems the Word has lost none of its power. An exceptional graphic projection complements the disorderly sonic trips of FlyLo’s work, who owns to it being someone else’s work with a a sheepish apology. One can even discern something resembling a Cubist interpretation of a witch’s face in the kaleidoscopic composition of shifting prisms, textures and cosmic scenes behind him. It would doubtless drive those intoxicated elements of a Saturday night crowd out of their minds. The crisp percussive lines Ellison threads through the incessant natter of cut-up samples and fragmented soundscapes at times explodes into a sort of roomy aural freefall, while the whole audio-visual experience lifts FlyLo’s work to new levels of sensory perception. As if to neutralise the ‘superstar DJ’ vibe of a surrounding laser display, Ellison throws in a reminder of his outstanding ear for pop and hip hop brilliance with the devastating opening groove of Tyler the Creator’s ‘Yonkers’ among others. After a quick encore and a thankyou from the “bottom of [his] heart”, Ellison signs off with The Rolling Stones’ ‘Paint It Black’ and jumps out into the capacity crowd to show them just how heartfelt his appreciation can be.
