Flamagra – Flying Lotus

Harry

Having been distracted during our first attempt to listen to the album by an interesting conversation about the nature of music taste and the ways people approach music, Zach and I decided to give it another listen just to do the album justice. However, it soon became clear to me why I didn’t listen the first time and that is because its f**king boring. To summarise, this album is a complete mess in my eyes. The sounds come across as really cheap and tinny and overloaded but with no real sonic depth. Although there are some pretty organic drum beats in places, the electronic ___ sound awful. The songs all just seem to start and stop without having developed any changes in tones or developments in what what was clearly the first idea he had for the song. I’m unlikely to revisit this sadly (let alone through the full 67 mins). The beat switch in the AP song was pretty good though.

41/100

I think Flying Lotus is an incredible interesting artist, and while he is someone who has worked with ALL the big dogs of the hip-hop/jazz world, most notably Kendrick Lamar, this album had all the right parts and all the potential to be sick. Sadly, I think it doesn’t deliver. Let’s start with the positives, the production is second to none and Lotus’ unique balance of ambience and complexity is considered and well executed. However, this album doesn’t feel like an event at all, which is partially why I have found it so hard to write this review. I feel like this album almost encourages distraction and boredom, from its 67 minute length to its use of features that are far too sporadic and infrequent. There is very little that grabs the listener and pulls them along, and as a result the album slightly fades into insignificance. While Flying Lotus has previously been at the cutting edge of the genre, this seems to have taken a step back.

68/100