Flying Lotus has never been one to stay on the grid. From the off-kilter instrumentals of 1983 through the psychotropic beatscapes of Cosmogramma to Spirit Box’s Lynchian neo-R&B, the one constant across Steven Ellison’s catalogue has been a playful disregard for established boundaries, both rhythmic and otherwise.
On his latest EP, though, Ellison has gone one step further. “There was no grid anymore, and there’s no time,” he says of the creative process behind BIG MAMA. “Time was malleable. That’s how I approached putting the music together, thinking about it like it’s a sketchbook, where there’s nothing telling you what it’s supposed to be. Instead of being confined to the BPM or the time signature that’s on the screen, I just treated the sound like sound.”
Coming up at the vanguard of the L.A. beat scene – a loosely organized collective of musicians and producers colouring instrumental hip-hop’s blueprints with experimental influences – Ellison’s early releases spearheaded a wave of glitchy boom-bap in the late ‘00s, a style that he believes has since lost its edge, watered down to become decaf “lo-fi beats” composed for coffee-shop playlists.
Article continues belowSince then, Ellison’s output has grown increasingly ambitious, pulling freely from jazz, funk, psych and IDM in kaleidoscopic collages of sound, densely layered and deftly manipulated, that exhibit an imagination of cosmic proportions. That imagination has since been redirected towards the medium of cinema – Ellison directed and scored the post-apocalyptic Kuso and sci-fi horror Ash – an experience that left FlyLo itching to head in an entirely different direction on his next musical project.
That project is BIG MAMA, a frenzied speedrun of an EP that squeezes seven tracks into its 13-minute runtime, careening through 8-bit chiptune, breakneck breakcore and screwball jazz fusion without looping a single bar of music along the way. Sounding a little bit like someone gave Aphex Twin and Herbie Hancock a heroic dose of Adderall and let them loose in the synth section of a Guitar Center, it’s one of the most chaotic things that Ellison’s ever recorded, a giddy rollercoaster ride of shifting tempos, mercurial moods and hyper-detailed sound design that barely gives you a moment to stop and take in the view.
We caught up with Flying Lotus to find out more about his creative process, his views on AI in music-making, and the synths, software and studio techniques behind BIG MAMA.
I read that your cousin bought you a Roland MC-505 when you were a teenager. Was that your first piece of electronic music gear?
“Technically, no – I did have access to some of my grandmother’s [Motown songwriter Marilyn McLeod] drum machines, like the Roland TR-626. I had that first, and I messed with that and made drum patterns and I really enjoyed it, but I started to feel like I needed to say more than just the drums. But you know, I was just a child when I was messing with those.”
When did computer music-making come into the picture?
“I was in college. I was at film school with my buddy Strangeloop and he was making a lot of music on his computer. I was so fascinated by the possibility of making music on a computer and working with software, but I’d never really considered it. I didn’t have someone who could show me that stuff. It seemed so complex, and I was busy doing film at the time.
“But there was this guy who lived in the dorm, he was a great friend and an awesome artist and he actually made cool music with the computer, and it was like… ‘wait, you can do that?’ He started showing me stuff, and that was mixed with me falling in love with a lot of the music that was coming out of LA, Stones Throw and a lot of the underground sound that was happening here. That really made me want to get into it.”
You started off using Reason, right? Then switched to Ableton Live around the time you released Cosmogramma?
“That’s right. It started off as me just using Ableton as a live device for my shows, and then slowly over time I started integrating it into my studio work, then running ReWire into it. Eventually I stopped using Reason for the most part, but I still use its soft synths from time to time.”
You’re still using Ableton today? What do you like about it?
“I don’t really mess with any other DAWs because I feel like there’s not much else I need to be able to say. I don’t know what other features that I personally need from a DAW. It’s got the live aspect sorted out, it has Max/MSP so it can expand it with features if I want to, so it’s kind of hard to leave it.
“I do like messing around with other toys from time to time, hardware things. I’ll mess with the MPC sometimes, I’ll mess with the LoopStation a lot, sometimes I’ll use the Push or the SP-404. Sometimes I use the phone, I use Koala Sampler. I like to mess around with different stuff, whatever’s inspiring.”
Moving forward to BIG MAMA. I read that you started work on this EP after going back to basics with just a laptop and a controller when you were working on the movie Ash. What made you want to switch up your process after that experience?
“When I was working on Ash, I felt like I was really pushing myself as a musician to make that soundtrack in the time that I had. I felt very much like my chops were on, and I wanted to do something that was very technical-feeling and very detail-oriented, because I felt like I had a really good grasp on the tools and the workflow, so I could be hyper-detailed about things and get ideas out at the same time. I wanted the contrast; with the movie there were themes and things that were very controlled, so I wanted to do something chaotic as a result.”
It was mentioned in the press release that you picked up a bunch of new gear before starting work on the project?
“I don’t know if that’s true… [laughs] I got a bunch of new sounds. It was funny, because when I did Ash, I just had my laptop and a controller, and it made me think differently about the gear. It made me think, ‘actually, I’m trying to enjoy the convenience of VSTs, and being able to take my studio anywhere and not feel like I’m particularly tied to my house to make music’.
I recorded a bunch of sounds with the Elektron Machinedrum, and then I bought the Monomachine
“It was a whole thing for me, because I’ve always been that kind of person who was just like, ‘I’ll wait until I’m back in my studio so I can work on music’. I never saw myself as the musician to travel with the laptop and make beats on the plane and all that. I’ve become that person more now as a result of working the way I did on the movie. So for me, I was just like, ‘okay, well, let me just fill my computer up with sounds’. I used my gear around the house, and I also just designed a bunch of sounds, I got some sounds and freaked them out.
“Actually, that's not true. I did buy the Elektron Machinedrum. I really wanted that, and I recorded a bunch of sounds with that, and then I bought the other one, the Monomachine. I started recording noises with those and I just built up a bank of noises and sounds and started messing with Ableton’s Granulator III, getting really into granular synthesis.
“My buddy Little Snake, he really got me on to the granular stuff. He works with straight audio, and I’ve always been more of a programming person, so it was an opportunity to start playing with audio. I didn’t really do much MIDI work except for the chords and the synth work, but otherwise, everything was audio that was chopped up and processed. It was different for me.”
So you spent a lot of time building up a collection of individual sounds before you even thought about putting them together in an arrangement?
“That’s absolutely it. It was actually a funny mental test. It was a really interesting way to work for me because it made me have to delay gratification in a way. I’m hearing all of these sounds that have so much potential, but I was like, ‘alright, chuck this away, chuck this away, and one day, it’ll all make sense’... and then I put it together.”
I guess the usual process is that you come up with an interesting sound, and it’s like… right, let’s start the track.
“Exactly. At least for my process, it’s like, get some cool drums, and then that’s the foundation, or build a nice synth line and then build everything around that. It was about practicing restraint. Even building little short phrases and chord progressions and not turning that into a song either. Just recording the MIDI and then tucking that away like, ‘I’ll come back to that’.
“Then one day it was like, ‘okay, actually think about this whole project…’ and instead of thinking about it with a grid, there was no grid anymore. It’s an invisible grid, and there’s no time. Time is malleable. That’s how I approached putting the music together, thinking about it like it’s a sketchbook, where there’s nothing telling you what it’s supposed to be.
“It’s a stupid thing to say out loud, but thinking that way was really mentally freeing. Instead of being confined to the BPM or the time signature that’s on the screen, don’t look at all that stuff and just treat the sound like sound. I don’t know if I will always work that way, but it was a new way to approach things.”
There’s a really maximalist, in-your-face quality to the sound design on the record. Was that an aesthetic you were deliberately aiming for or did that emerge from your process naturally?
“It was definitely deliberate. I feel like the music that I was listening to when I was recording was definitely on the louder side, and more sound design-driven. But the thing about it is, because I'm thinking in this way with sound design, I'm using fewer sounds. So in a way, it sounds more in-your-face because I'm using less, and those bigger sounds have more room to go places in your speakers.
“Sometimes you just have a big-ass 808 and it just rips. You don't have to put much under it. That's why trap has been doing so much – just hit that fucking bass, man, and hope for the best.”
So by stripping back the arrangement, the few elements that are left behind have more impact.
“I think so. It’s a sonic push and pull that I really got into with this EP. Playing with time, stretching a moment out or speeding a moment up. I wanted it to feel like, even for an EP, you feel very satisfied and it’s short and sweet, because it’s hopefully a bunch of information that’s dense enough for you to be like, ‘damn, now I want a nap’. [laughs]”
There’s such a sense of contrast in the arrangements. On Brobobasher, there’s this melancholy piano and then this distorted, militant drum part comes in straight afterwards. Were you trying to create something that felt unstable and erratic?
“Absolutely, because that’s where we are, that’s the time we’re in, and the moods shift, the feelings shift that way. When I’m approaching these things I’m also thinking visually, cinematically, so it’s like the way drama is: ‘suddenly, a thing appears!’ I know exactly what you’re talking about. It’s also kind of cheeky. Sometimes I like to play with how serious a moment is supposed to be. I try not to take it too seriously, but also, I’m a very sentimental motherfucker.”
I definitely picked up that vibe on this record, it’s so playful.
“I hope so. That’s why I wanted the artwork to be the way that it is. I wanted it to be playful and to remind people that I’m having a good time.”
I love this idea that the EP is one long, continuous composition, and there are no loops. So much electronic music is structured around repetition; it’s refreshing to hear something so unpredictable.
“I was hoping so. I feel that as we’re jumping further in the time of everything being algorithmic, I think there’s going to be this niche for anti-algorithmic music that’s still fun. It doesn’t have to all be so experimental that it’s not fun anymore.”
You’ve said that on this EP you were trying to bring in more of a human element, in response to the “sterile” vibe you were hearing in a lot of contemporary electronic music. Can you tell us about how you achieve that in the studio?
“One thing I like to do is try not to overthink the structure. Sometimes I’ll make a mistake with some keyboard work or whatever, and I’ll just leave it. Personally, when I feel like I know where a song’s going, I don’t want to listen to it anymore. I like to be surprised. Personally, that’s one of the things that I can contribute to this. Everyone has their thing, but I feel like that’s probably what you’re hoping I do at this point, is surprise you a little bit.”
You’ve spoken before about spending time studying synthesis and learning new techniques while working on previous projects. Did you learn anything new while you were working on BIG MAMA?
“Absolutely. That’s why, to me, the fun is there, it’s the learning and the experimenting. I didn’t know this was going to be a project. I didn’t know what it was going to be at all. I just started creating in this new process and everything just started to reveal itself from that. I was just happy to be in this new way of working. And then suddenly, it was like… ‘oh, actually, stop. I’m zapped now. Whatever I had to say, this is what it was meant to be. That’s it.’”
Across your catalogue, your songs are typically a lot shorter in length than the average, around the one- or two-minute mark. Why do you think that is?
“You know what’s funny though? Most of the tracks I’m hearing now, they’re starting to get a lot shorter, bro! It’s so crazy. [laughs] I’m like, okay, let’s go, 35 seconds! I don’t know… again I think it just comes from the fact that I don’t want to be bored by an idea. Sometimes I feel like I have a lot I want to say and I don’t want to overstay my welcome on a groove or a vibe. I feel like also, people’s attention spans are just like mine, if not worse, so it’s like, ‘do we need to be here this long?’ If people love it, they can just start it over and play it again.”
What were you listening to while you worked on the new material?
“Little Snake, he’s a labelmate on Brainfeeder. I learned a lot of the granular synthesis stuff from him, again, working in audio… I didn’t want to do the music that he does, but I was really inspired by his process. It was all over the place, but it was a phase where I was listening to more electronic music, versus my normal listening, where I’m listening to older stuff, like ‘70s music. It’s either ‘70s music, or lately, bro, I’m not gonna lie, I just listen to liquid jungle and drum and bass.”
Has your work in the film world informed your process as a music-maker?
“Oh, man, absolutely. I think it made me a better musician working on film stuff. Because of deadlines, it's instilled this way of starting and finishing work. When you're doing a movie, and you’ve got a deadline, you’ve gotta finish the track this week. There's no, like, sitting with it for six months and you just take a couple drums out of the track or whatever, and then you're done with it. No, it's like, this shit has to move quicker.
I would just take forever on a track. I would start a track that was like a cool loop, and let that just sit there for two years
“I really enjoy that process of finishing what you start. Because before, I would just take forever on a track. I would start a track that was like a cool loop, and let that just sit there for two years. [laughs] And now I'm more into the spirit of, if I start a thing I really like, I try to finish it and see it through to the end.
“Also, it's hard to come back to something when the energy is different. Whatever the spark that you had that created the thing, when that changes and you're in a different headspace, it becomes way more challenging to finish the idea. I learned to try to finish something while I'm in it.”
You mentioned in a previous interview that your Ableton sets are like your room, they’re a mess. Would you still say you’re disorganized in the way that you work or has that changed?
“My Ableton sets are way more organized now, thank you very much. [laughs] I'm scolding my younger self right now, but yeah, there's way more organization. Just because by being disorganized, you end up spending more time doing stuff. Taking that time to set your sessions up, to organize your samples, all that stuff, you think all that stuff takes time, but it actually takes more time to be looking through shit, finding folders, like, ‘where did I put it?’ It helps you stay in your flow when you don't have to think about, you know, where your VSTS are, or whatever.”
I wanted to ask about a few specific moments on the record. I love that wavering synth line in Captain Kernel that comes in towards the end. Was that the Deckard’s Dream? I know you’ve used that in the past.
“I love the Deckard’s Dream, but I think I used… man, good question. I feel like I wouldn’t have done that with audio, because that playing, I need that on MIDI. Playing that kind of shit, I don’t want to fuck it up. [laughs] I feel like I probably used the [Cherry Audio] GX-80 for that, the VST of the Yamaha CS-80.”
The drum programming on tracks like Antelope Onigiri was another highlight for me. Can you tell us about how you approached the drums on this record?
“I’m glad you asked, because I felt like that was mostly the difference for me, and the process, it felt kind of trippy. Basically I would record several drum loops, process them and trip them out live, and then cut them up back into time, and then layer them. But then I used a lot of synth drums as well, which I hadn’t really before. I used this one drum synth, Sonic Charge Microtonic, it’s really cool. It’s a drum machine, but it’s oscillators. It can build really cool drum programs.”
What kind of tools were you using to process the drums after you’d resampled them?
“It would be the Granulator, and I would do a pass of just that, then I would do a pass that had reverb on it, then I would do a pass that had echoes on it. It would be like 16 bars of drums, all chopped differently, and then I would rerecord it, reprocess it, and that would just be for a 16-bar section in the project. So I would work on like, 16 bars a day, or something like that, when I put this together. It would just be very small chunks of work, just to get all the details in there, all the automation for all of the movement.”
Taking such a detailed approach, did you ever find yourself overworking things, or spending too much time on a single element?
“I felt like this was that project though, you know? Whatever I was doing, it was meant to be that. This was supposed to be the most maximalist thing that I could do. It was intentionally geeky. I was intentionally trying to put as many tracks into my Ableton as I could and make it all work together.”
I’m interested to hear your thoughts on AI in music. We’re at such a pivotal moment right now, with platforms like Suno becoming increasingly popular, and there’s a lot of debate going on around authenticity and authorship, and whether these tools should even exist in the first place. What are your thoughts?
“I think everyone should do whatever the fuck they wanna do, at the end of the day. I hear these conversations with people talking about this stuff, and all I hear is ‘Auto-Tune sucks, get rid of it’. I hear ‘drum machines have no soul’. I hear ‘you can’t make hip-hop on a laptop, computers have no swing’. It goes to the same place.
Everyone should do whatever the fuck they wanna do, at the end of the day
“I just want everyone to do whatever they believe in. Just go with your fucking spirit and make some dope shit, if you’re going to use the AI to make that shit better than the shit that you’re doing. Be better than the machine, be greater. I haven’t heard it yet, but I would hope that people use the shit to make a new genre, instead of trying to create what we’ve done already. Use these things to make the next version of electronic music that could only be possible with this technology. That’s what I want to see.”
Have you used any AI tools in your own work?
“It’s definitely a tricky thing. It looks like it’s appealing, but actually, at this point, I’m enjoying the process of recording. I wouldn’t say that I would never do it or I would never go there… I don’t know.”
If you were shipped out to a desert island, and you could only bring three things to make music with for the rest of your life, what would they be?
“Well, my cell phone. [laughs] I’d take that, because I can use Koala like crazy on that… alright, fine. We’ll ditch that, I won’t take the cell phone, I’ll take fun things. I’m gonna take my Yamaha CS-80, my Boss RC-505 Loop Station, and then my Ableton Push, because I could do most of my Ableton work with that thing. That’d be a fun gig, actually, that’d be a fun time.”
Do you use the Push a lot?
“I have a separate workstation in my spot. I call it the live room. It’s got my baby grand piano in there, it’s got a Push in there, it’s got a CS-50 and some synths. It’s computerless, which is really fun, and it’s got my Loop Station, so I can go in there without a DAW and just jam. It’s so nice. That’s what I use my Push for, to sequence that stuff when I’m not using the Loop Station.”
Do you find it’s a different energy when you’re writing without a computer in front of you?
“Absolutely, it’s freeing. It feels good, and sometimes it’s really hypnotic and lovely and transportive. And sometimes I’ll do it, and I’ll be like, ‘man, I should be working on my actual Ableton’, and it’ll bring me back to my computer, in a good way.
“Sometimes I can go in that room and not think about it – whatever I’m doing in there is not going to come out, but it’ll be fun. It’s just like, jamming, playing your instrument, getting your chops up… and then it’s like, ‘alright, well now I’m going to really make a track’, and then I go to the computer. It’s fun – you need that sometimes.”
You said in a previous interview that the more you get into technology, the less music you make. Is that still the case, or have you started to experiment with new gear more in recent years?
“There are phases where I’ll be looking for inspiration, it’ll get kind of dry and I’m like, ‘I’m tired of all these toys, whatever…’, and then it’s great to get some new toys, it can kick you back into working. That’s what’s great about getting geeky and looking around for sounds and VSTs, they always bring you back.
I understand why people buy a bunch of gear sometimes, but you don’t need all the keyboards... you need two, three keyboards – that’s it!
“Sometimes you need that shiny new thing to get you going. I understand why people buy a bunch of gear sometimes, but also, it’s about trying to get back to your flow, ultimately. You don’t need all the keyboards; you need two, three keyboards – that’s it!”
I suppose it can become a distraction at a certain point.
“It really can be. It gets expensive for no reason. I always remember that there are so many kids out there who think my best work is the music I made when I didn’t know anything and I had nothing. [laughs] You know what I’m saying? I was making this music back in my grandma’s house, I had nothing and no speakers – that’s the shit that y’all love the most? That’s great, that’s wonderful.”
Speaking of your older work, there’s a reissue of 1983 coming out soon. Looking back to that project, what’s the most significant thing you’ve learned since then, as a musician and a producer?
“So much. Back then, I only knew one or two chords! I was only using Reason at the time, and Recycle and Adobe Audition. I didn’t have much to work with, except I had a lot of cool records, and I was really encouraged by the label to do the quote unquote ‘other stuff’, to put that stuff out, which I think was the best thing that happened to me at that time.
“They were encouraging me to put out less of the straight-up hip-hop stuff that I was doing, and more of the trippy synth stuff, they were feeling that more. It was like, ‘oh, wow, y’all like that?’ It was cool, and then I just kind of kept going that way. I learned a lot, and I grew a lot, but that one really did set the tone.”
A lot of our readers are aspiring musicians and producers. Do you have any advice for young artists trying to make their way in the industry?
“Play an instrument. Don’t forget to play your shit. More and more, as we are getting into the world of Suno and one-click music, the playing will be more valuable. People will want to go and see human music, to see people performing and playing. So play your instrument, don’t forget your instrument, now more than ever.”
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