"Ever since his first two albums as Flying Lotus - 2006's 1983 and 2008's Los Angeles - he's produced great quantities of mercurial, glancing funk that's as likely to get your head nodding as it is to snap your neck. Ricocheting around the nexus of hip-hop, jazz and IDM, FlyLo's elegant machine music has always been too elusive and fusion-y to satisfy genre purists."
""Captain Kernel" tricks you into thinking it's glistening sunrise ambient before morphing into a facsimile of a mid-'70s George Duke fusion fantasia for candy ravers. Similarly, "Horse Nuke" begins with an eerie space drone, then blasts into frenetic, video-arcade dubstep."
"After an intro of piano romanticism, "Brobobasher" generates huge, bulbous kick drums that cohere into a stomping techno jam. The prankster-ish "Pink Dream" flaunts maximalist beats and boisterous synth exhibitionism that would set Rick Wakeman's cape aflame, and "Antelope Onigiri" is madly psychedelic digital jazz with Music Is Rotted One Note-era Squarepusher in its DNA."
Steven Ellison, performing as Flying Lotus, has built a career on producing mercurial, genre-defying music that blends hip-hop, jazz, and IDM. His tracks are characterized by kinetic activity and ethereal qualities, though they often leave minimal lasting impression. Big Mama, a seven-track Brainfeeder EP under 14 minutes, represents one of his most concentrated works, featuring no guest musicians. The EP showcases Ellison's ability to rapidly shift musical styles within individual tracks: "Captain Kernel" transitions from ambient to fusion funk, "Horse Nuke" moves from space drone to dubstep, and "Brobobasher" evolves from piano romanticism into techno. Other standout tracks include the maximalist "Pink Dream" and psychedelic "Antelope Onigiri," demonstrating Ellison's skill at packing diverse musical ideas into brief, exciting compositions.
Read at SPIN
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