Throwback Files: Flying Lotus

Read my 2012 interview with Steve Ellison aka Flying Lotus

Selected Works is a weekly (usually) newsletter by the Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Aotearoa (Wellington, New Zealand) based freelance music journalist, broadcaster, copywriter and sometimes DJ Martyn Pepperell, aka Yours Truly. Most weeks, Selected Works consists of a recap of what I’ve been doing lately and some of what I’ve been listening to and reading, paired with film photographs I’ve taken + some bonuses. All of that said, sometimes, it takes completely different forms.

In the late 2000s and early 2010s, I was up to my eyeballs in the new generation beats and post-dubstep sounds emanating out of Los Angeles and London via open-eared labels like Brainfeeder and Hyperdub. At the time, Flying Lotus was an obvious favourite, especially after I saw him perform a hybrid live set/DJ set at Wellington’s now-shuttered Sandwiches nightclub in 2009. That was the same summer that I saw Leonard Cohen perform for the first and last time. It was very much a time.

Three years later, I had the opportunity to interview Flying Lotus for a bi-monthly New Zealand music magazine named Rip It Up. Rip It Up didn’t stick around for much longer after that, but every now and then, I stumble across some of what I wrote for it on a hard drive or in the depths of my email account. This is one of those times.

RIP IT UP: FLYING LOTUS, 2012

Over the last six years, Los Angeles' Flying Lotus (real name: Steve Ellison) has carved out a lane for himself as one of the most recognisable yet thoughtful electronic beat musicians of the new millennium. Over the course of what now counts at four full length albums, a bevy of EPs and singles and a whole lot of international touring and diverse creative side projects, he's distinguished himself as a musician, record producer, filmmaker and record label owner, in the process obtaining a profile similar to the heights scaled by the English IDM god Aphex Twin in the 90s. He's the guy who gets described as the new J Dilla on a regular basis, and more often than not, the primary ambassador of Los Angles' globally loved experimental beat music movement, respected by serious musician fans everywhere he goes.

All of this, regardless, in the ultra hyped lead in to the highly anticipated release of his fourth full-length album Until The Quiet Comes, Steve could metaphorically speaking, hear the devil knocking at his door. "My headspace gets kind of interesting sometimes, man," he muses in his very clear Californian accent, speaking to me down the phone from his home in Los Angeles on a northern hemisphere summer’s day. "I go through times of really hating myself. I get really fearful and doubtful. It really is a real dark place, one that I feel is very much a part of the process, but fuck, I wish I didn't have to deal with it. I feel like I am confronted with a lot of things, and it is a very heavy feeling. It's hard to explain." He pauses to think before continuing. "Everything is always on the line, all the time."

"I'm tired of being in the club that says it is all good, ‘cause it is definitely not all good. I'm confronted with that shit on a daily basis, cause after [my last album] Cosmogramma came out, I've been getting a lot of things thrown at me. I could make a lot of money, I could easily fuck around and make a million dollars doing some pop shit. You know what I mean? I'm getting hit by those people. But I get conflicted. I'm like, what am I really doing? What am I really trying to say? What am I even doing this for? Do people even really give a fuck? At the end of the day this [music] shit is so disposable to people now. Do people really give a fuck? Should I really give a fuck? Why do I care so much? I get that shit all the time. It is part of my daily thinking." In the shadow of this commitment to "being inspired at any cost", Steve uses this darkness to shepherd himself towards the light, creativity speaking. "As long as I can find things that genuinely inspire me, I'm good," he says. "People need to surround themselves with inspiration."

Nothing if not honest, with Until The Quiet Comes, Steve has steered away from the almost borderless sonic panoramas of Cosmogramma, a record he described as a space opera because, as he puts it, "It reminded me of Star Wars in a way, very broad and theatrical." Instead, zoning in on as he says, "the inward journey, the intimate journey," the album’s eighteen song running time sees him building on the jazz, soul, funk and hip-hop informed electronic soundworld he has painstakingly fashioned and evolved from release to release. This time, folding elements of psychedelic rock and beyond that psychedelica in the broader sense into the mix, the vivid forty-seven-minute journey he has shaped is by and large a direct response to the hyper-stimulated, throwaway nature of modern life in the first world. " Honestly, that is really why I called the record Until The Quiet Comes," he admits. "It's all those voices, all those things that haunt me in my mind. I think that having any kind of clarity these days is definitely a rare blessing."

Working alongside his primary collaborator Thundercat (a bassist, also known for his work with Erykah Badu, Suicidal Tendencies and countless others), and vocalists Niki Randa, Thom Yorke, Erykah Badu and Laura Darlington, the process Steve went through to create Until The Quiet Comes sounds pretty straight forward printed on paper. "After Cosmogramma I felt a pressure to expand the universe I had set up for himself, but without drinking from the same water with the music", he says. "I thought it would probably be a wise thing to try and have a different approach. Even if I was working with some of the same people, just to kinda show a different perspective to it. At the same time, I do want to keep these albums feeling like they are little movies. I really do appreciate the album format. I think that what is the most fun for me is knowing that I have this amount of time to take the listener on a ride."

Central to this was Steve's relationship with Thundercat, both as a studio and live performance collaborator and now as a friend. "When we first started working, it was very business-minded in a way," he admits. Now, we don't talk about money or anything, but I try to make sure that he is cool. He knows that I'm going to produce his records. So he knows he has to work on my shit, and I have to work on his shit. We don't talk about it. It is just an understood thing; it doesn't phase me at all. But as far as working on stuff, it is the best because he understands what I am going for a lot. More often than not, he knows exactly what I am looking for. It is very strange because a lot of the communication doesn't have to be very formal. He understands off the vibe, and we have a lot of common points of reference with music we like. We can be like, make it more Michael McDonald, or more like Gentle Giant! We'll jump around a lot like that. It's just crazy. He is like my brother. It is the most fun ever. I swear we have been doing it for so long now, but a lot of times when we work it still feels really fresh."

Alongside this interplay, another key feature is the aforementioned singers, all of whom Steve has different connections with. First off, we have Niki Randa of Blank Blue, a psychedelic leaning alternative hip-hop group, who appears on 'Getting There' and ‘Hunger.’ " Niki is the main catalyst of this album, actually," Steve enthuses. "She really inspired to me to start trying a different direction with music, mostly based on our appreciation for psychedelic rock. I have remixed her music before. I used some of samples of her in Cosmogramma. I think that she has just been a part of it ever since."

Then we have Erykah Badu, who Steve met through Thundercat and who appears on the album's lead single 'See Thru to U.’ "She is like my mum in a way," he laughs affectionately. "She is amazing. She is like the real deal. She isn't fake, you don't have to work to make her sound good, she is already good out the gate." Within a similar ballpark of fame, Steve also worked with Thom Yorke on 'Electric Candyman,’ marking their second formal recorded collaboration. "Thom sang on '...And The World Laughs with You' on Cosmogramma," he continues. " I was surprised that he came back because he had worked with me before. I think he likes the fact that I am not afraid to mess with his vocals. He knows that I like to do freaky shit with my music."

Rounding things out, he linked up again with Laura Darlington, whom he describes as "my lucky charm" for 'Phantasm.’ "Laura has been there from the beginning. I don't even know her that well, but she has been on every one of my albums. I think I've hung out with her in real life twice. She is a super nice person, and I really like her sound."

Alongside creating and touring his own music, another big concern of Steve's is running the independent record label Brainfeeder, a collective that has become amongst the most hotly tipped in the modern electronic beat music world. Founded in 2008, Brainfeeder has introduced listeners to the likes of The Gaslamp Killer, Mono/Poly, Samiyam, Thundercat, Lorn, Jeremiah Jae and numerous others. Created as a platform to allow Steven to support the musicians he believes in on their own terms, the releases sometimes baffle the public. And given Steve's profile, it's easy to expect to hear the next big thing, as opposed to the next difficult-to-get-into but ultimately very rewarding thing. " I am sure there is always some kind of strange expectation with Brainfeeder," he admits. "But at the end of the day, there is only so much I want to get involved. I trust these people, and I let them do what they want to do. I always give my opinion, but I just want to push what they really want to push. What they believe in."

When it comes to the realities of running an independent label, as he was with his mind state leading into the release of Until The Quiet Comes, Steve is equally upfront. "There is still no money. There is still a lot of work to do. There are still a lot of things that I wish we could do that we haven't done. But I think it has been a really good platform for people to do the things they want to do and then go on to do bigger things. I don't ever want to be the kind of label where we hold an artist back from doing something with a bigger label or whatever. I want it to be a platform so that an artist can be heard and do their thing, move forward, build their own career, start their own labels, that's what I want to see."

Despite his frustrations, Steve is objectively succeeding. Whether busy creating albums actually worth devoting an hour of your life to listening to or helping set the careers of highly creative individuals off the right way, he's doing it and providing inspiration for a new generation of beat-focused electronic musicians across the globe. Having talked to me openly for half an hour, he informs me his friends have conned him into having a party at his home, and with text messages and calls coming in, it's time to go prepare to play host. His parting words? "It was good to talk to you, man. Peace!"

PSA:

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2025 Q1 RECAP:

Here’s a quick recap of most of the outward-facing media work I’ve done over the last three months.

Audio Culture: Aaradhna

Aaradhna Jayantilal Patel burst onto the Australasian music scene in 2004 when her vocals featured alongside the R&B sibling duo Adeaze on their platinum hit single, ‘Getting Stronger’. In the years since, Aaradhna has repeatedly proved her mettle in the studio and on stage, affirming her status as one of New Zealand’s most beloved modern R&B and soul artists. Read here.

Audio Culture: Christoph El Truento goes dub

Christopher Martin James, better known as Christoph El Truento, was introduced to Jamaican dub music as a child during the final years of the 20th century. Thinking back to his upbringing, he remembers finding a copy of Augustus Pablo and King Tubby’s King Tubbys Meets Rockers Uptown album in one of his older brothers’ record collections. At the time, Truento spent evenings flipping through the radio dial to see what he could find on the airwaves in 1990s Auckland. In comparison, the slinky sounds he heard on that record – equal parts spaced-out and low-slung – were an early revelation. Read here.

Audio Culture: Chris Cox aka Frank Booker

For over two and a half decades, Chris Cox, aka Frank Booker, has kept dancefloors moving across New Zealand and Australia, and even as far afield as New York, London and Japan. Read here.

Mixmag: Traxman is the essence of Chicago dance music

Traxman started to make music with the simple aim of making people dance and have a good time. That hasn’t changed, but since he started out in the '80s, Corky Strong’s masterful productions and DJ sets have marked him out as a house music great. He has been at the forefront of three different generations of dance music in Chicago, pushing the sounds of ghetto house, juke and footwork in the city and to the world. Read here.

Rolling Stone: ‘It’s Not Enough’: Four Albums Into Her Career, Nadia Reid Is Far From Done

The folk singer-songwriter tells Rolling Stone AU/NZ about her transformative new album, being influenced by Janet Frame, and more. Read here.

Mixmag: Exploring the sounds of ‘90s and early 2000s techno in Aotearoa

Growing up in Te Whanganui-a-Tara/Wellington—the capital city of Aotearoa/New Zealand—my first exposure to techno came in the late ‘90s through a network of record shops, cafes, clothing stores, and all-ages warehouse parties. Read here.

DJ Mag: Six emerging artists you need to hear: March 2025

The latest and greatest artists rising to the top this month. From percussive techno heaters and FWD-looking breaks to wide-eyed trance, mellow grime and Afro-house, here’s March 2025’s list of upcoming talent you should be keeping track of. I covered DJ PGZ. Read here.

Rolling Stone: How Making Music Together Strengthened the Bond of This New Zealand Family Band

Dream-pop trio Womb discuss their ethereal new album, revealing how their music is emotionally impacting the masses. Read here.

Dazed: 10 great albums you may have missed in the last three months

Featuring First Nations club revolutionaries DJ PGZ & Yikes, New Zealand’s own family-led freak-folk ensemble Womb, and Iranian-American trip-hop artist Saffron Bloom. Read here.

MOUTHFULL RADIO: BEAUTIFUL

Much love to everyone who has listened to my recent 90s/early 2000s NZ house music DJ mix for Mouthfull Radio. If you’ve missed out, you can tap in above.

FIN.