Flying Loudly

It comes as little surprise when Flying Lotus aka Steven Ellison answers the phone only to humbly apologise for not being able to chat at that precise moment as he's with another interviewer. Normally talents would just ignore the call or hang up on the other interviewer, but this is a man who is as generous with his time as he is ridiculously busy. A multi-tasker to the max, juggling a packed life of touring, collaborating, producing, promoting and running a record label, FlyLo really is some kind of Renaissance man when it comes to the world of electronica; he does it all. And with a new album now dropping, it's safe to say pretty much every music media with taste the world over is clambering for his attention.

“I have a little help with the label, thankfully,” laughs Ellison when we finally do get a chance to chat, and he's asked how the hell he manages to balance his time between his own work, his boss duties at Brainfeeder and media duties. “But yeah, it gets kinda crazy man, it's really crazy. You know, like when it's really buzzing it does my head in with all this stuff. But, really, I couldn't have it any other way man. It's so much fun, I have such a fun time working and bringing cool art forward. It's one of my passions; being able to spread the music or art that I think is really amazing. It's great.”

The new album, Until The Quiet Comes – its name itself perhaps a reference to his own hectic schedule – features a range of collaborations, including Nobody, School Of Seven Bells and Prefuse 73 vocalist Niki Randa on two tracks, regular FlyLo music melder and Daedelus' wife Laura Darlington, high priestess of soul Erykah Badu, jazz maestro Thundercat and Radiohead lead genius Thom Yorke, who also featured on Flying Lotus' last album, Cosmogramma. This latter collab may surprise ears though, Yorke's voice this time being tweaked to a point where recognition may escape some. “Well I just tweaked the vocals to make him sound different,” explains Ellison in his cooler-than-thou baritone. “You know, if I get my hands on a vocal then I don't want it be fucking the focus of the song, just a piece of it.”

Tampering with such a distinctive and celebrated vocal seems a move few would have the confidence to do, let alone be allowed to by Yorke. But FlyLo ain't the norm. “Yeah, that's why he talks to me though. That's why he likes my shit, you know what I mean, because he knows that I'll fuck with it – I'll twist and mangle it and turn it into some other shit.” He's even got Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood playing guitar on the album, one of the many impressive artists who were involved in Until The Quiet Comes but don't get mentioned in the track listing on the back of the album, when most artists would make such collabs a focal point. “It's really about the tune, you know, it's not so much about who it is but the tune and the sound that I'm looking for,” explains Ellison of his selection process for artists to help him produce the sounds and songs he desires.

“I'm blessed to have a lot of amazing people to collaborate with me, but the names aren't important, it's what they contribute. You know, there's a drummer who I like to work with – nobody knows who he is around here, he's not like a huge famous drummer. I could just work with some famous drummer if I wanted to, but he and I are good friends and have a good working relationship. And that goes way further than money or names and all that shit. And I hope that, I feel that it's the same with the vocalists and all the other musicians I work with; it doesn't matter who they are, it matters what they contribute to the conversation.”

Unsurprisingly Flying Lotus has no shortage of quality talent looking to collaborate with him. He's committed himself to working with the likes of Blank Blue, Woebegone, Hodgy Beats, Kode9, Matthewdavid, Earl Sweatshirt, Gonjasufi, Samiyam, Ras G and Joker, just to name a few, but the offers are getting difficult to keep up with. “Oh man, I can't!” Ellison laughs in relation to how he keeps up with requests. “That's the toughest part about going to sleep man, is knowing that I could've done more with my day - you know, that I could've done more shit; I could've done more work and made the songs more crazy, contributed something better.

“I always feel guilty when I go to bed. Maybe once a month, when I really get all my work done musically and all that shit, then I feel okay because I'm like, 'Now I can go to bed because I've got something cool to listen to when I wake up.'” Perhaps then that helps explain what he was attempting to achieve in making this album. “I wanted it to kinda have this innocent edge to it; I wanted it to feel like a lot of the melodies I put forward are more innocent, more from a child-like perspective. I like having sounds from the Fender Rhodes – like old organ sounds, old drum machines – to give it this kinda vintage feel.”

What is it about this childish innocence that the great-nephew of jazz great Alice Coltrane is attracted to? “I don't know, I think… I think it's… I think that it's so hard to hold onto now, that innocence. That's just the way the world works, that this innocence is being tried to be taken away from us all the time. With the business and global situation, everything is very adult all the time. So now it's just very rare to have that feeling of innocence in my life, so I try to think of it as a musical notion now, not so much as a personal reality.” Sounds like a classic case of music as escapism. “Oh, it always has been. Music has been there for me in some pretty crazy times man.”

Speaking of crazy, if you're yet to witness the LA producer's album teaser for Until The Quiet Comes, do so now. Directed by Khalil Joseph, the short film of the same name uses a few of the album's tracks to soundtrack a shirtless man hypnotically dancing through gang-filled streets, a bloodied body of water and other emotionally affecting scenes. “I thought it would be really, really cool to have a film that really represented the album; as a first introduction to the album before anyone's heard it. I thought it would be really cool to showcase the album visually because I wanted it to be interpreted as this cinematic kind of album.”

And if the rumours have any weight, sounds like we might just get to witness this cinematic experience being conjured live, or at least in DJ form, in Australia sometime next year. “I might do it, yeah,” Ellison responds as to whether the rumours are true. “Hopefully February man, I'm just trying to figure that out.” Flying fingers crossed.

Flying Lotus will be playing the following shows:

Sunday 30 - Monday 31 December - Origin NYE, Fairbridge Village WA