Name: Flamagra by Flying Lotus
Brand: Flying Lotus
SKU: 801061029135
Price: 9.9 USD
Availability: OnlineOnly
Rating: 3.5 (189 reviews)

ALBUM

Innumerable artists cite David Lynch as an inspiration, but Steven Ellison is the only one to have had a serendipitous encounter with the filmmaker that affirmed an album's theme and led to a collaboration on its central track. At a party some point after the release of 2014's You're Dead, Ellison, who had been considering the thematic potential of fire, heard Lynch spin a characteristically outré tale about an inferno threatening to engulf a neighborhood. This developed into "Fire Is Coming," a kind of radio drama vignette placed in the middle of Flamagra, the sixth Flying Lotus album. After Lynch delivers the warning, normalcy by Ellison's standard resumes with a jouncing beat, a tangly Thundercat bass line, and a frightful chant about the element's destructive power. Fire's positive and negative associations are referenced by many of Ellison's other collaborators here. For Little Dragon on the dizzied "Spontaneous" -- Ellison's closest brush with pop yet -- it represents new love. George Clinton sounds a little devilish on "Burning Down the House" (an original), shuffling funk that puts pyromaniac twists on his "Atomic Dog" and "Aqua Boogie." While the album begins with a crackle and ends with a poetic epilogue about its lasting effects, fire's role in the album elsewhere is either nonexistent or negligible. It's somewhat obscured by a straggling sequence that runs beyond an hour -- over 20 minutes longer than any previous Flying Lotus LP. The spluttery, helter-skelter thrash-fusion instrumentals are overabundant -- duly animated and spirited, yet infrequently as riveting as they are on Ellison's preceding sessions with welcomed holdovers such as strings master Miguel Atwood-Ferguson, keyboardist Brandon Coleman, and two thirds of the Bruner brigade, aka Thundercat and drumming sibling Ronald Jr. Most moving are "Thank U Malcolm," a skyward Mac Miller tribute, and "Takashi," a high-velocity belter that sounds like an update of an imagined 1976 collision between Stevie Wonder and Return to Forever. As for the vocal numbers, the highlights -- the whirling, whomping Anderson .Paak jam "More" and the sublime, Thundercat-fronted "The Climb" -- spread clear and generous messages about love and resolve. Also involved are Solange, Shabazz Palaces, Denzel Curry, Tierra Whack, and Toro y Moi, whose appearances veer from wraithlike to comically perverse, and vary to muddling effect. Somewhere in here is a 40-minute program with greater impact. Getting to know the whole thing well enough to make a custom-contracted edition is worth the time.

Flamagra

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1. Heroes

2. Post Requisite

3. Heroes In A Half Shell

4. More (feat. Anderson .Paak)

5. Capillaries

6. Burning Down The House (feat. George Clinton)

7. Spontaneous (feat. Little Dragon)

8. Takashi

9. Pilgrim Side Eye

10. All Spies

11. Yellow Belly (feat. Tierra Whack)

12. Black Balloons Reprise (feat. Denzel Curry)

13. Fire Is Coming (feat. David Lynch)

14. Inside Your Home

15. Actually Virtual (feat. Shabazz Palaces)

16. Andromeda

17. Remind U

18. Say Something

19. Debbie Is Depressed

20. Find Your Own Way Home

21. The Climb (feat. Thundercat)

22. Pygmy

23. 9 Carrots (feat. Toro y Moi)

24. FF4

25. Land Of Honey (feat. Solange)

26. Thank U Malcolm

27. Hot Oct.

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