By PATRICK DOHERTY

COPY EDITOR

The sign of a truly innovative musician is the ability to inspire a sort of creative energy amongst his listeners and peers. Steven Ellison (better known as Flying Lotus) has that trait as an artist. Dozens of well-known, and thousands of unknown hip hop producers have attempted to emulate FlyLo’s unique style that defined such ground breaking records as 2008s Los Angelos, and 2010s Cosmogramma. However, all have fallen short of perfecting the nuance present in Ellison’s work. Flying Lotus’ unparalleled instrumentation and arrangement remains in a league of its own among a sea of other electronically fueled instrumental hip hop creators. Until The Quiet Comes continues, while still maintaing experimental freshness.

Until the Quiet Comes, like Los Angelos, wears its influences on its sleeve: trip-hop, IDM and jazz are just a sampling of the genres featured on the album, and when combined under FlyLo’s expert guidance, they bring into existence musical works that sound as if they were mixed and mastered in the distant future. The album begins with the track “All In”. While the leading melodies glide effortlessly over the low, buzzing bass, light synthesizer elements constantly dart from note to note like an over-caffeinated dragon-fly. Unlike Cosmogramma, an album whose songs all flowed together like a free-form jazz experiment, the 18 tracks of Until the Quiet Comes manage to both come together nicely as an album, while also still being unto themselves as individual pieces of music. For example, “Putty Boy Strut” is an upbeat marching song propelled forward by a punchy bass drum, on-beat claps, and a lead melody reminiscent of soundtracks found on 8-bit platformers from the SNES era. The song that directly follows, “See Thru to U” is a dreamlike spell defined by dancing hi-hats, airy vocals provided by Erykah Badu, and a finger bass that lurks in the lower registers. Normally, this type of mood variety on one album would provide an unpleasant sense of disconnection, but Ellison manages to keep everything on track in terms of consistency and transitions.

Overall, Flying Lotus managed to create an album that may perhaps be his most accessible, while still continuing to expand his repertoire as a brilliant and inventive producer who’s leading a Renaissance amongst West-Coast beat-makers.

5 out of 5 Stars

Stand-Out Tracks:  “Getting There,” “Putty Boy Strut”