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Oct 13, 2014As each song merges into the next, as one style succeeds another, the sensation is that of being in a dream.
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Oct 6, 2014This is a carnival of imagination with an intricate balance to its sequencing and a cohesion of sound and concept to die for.
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Oct 6, 2014This record is a wholly singular work; not only does it defy expectations of what a Flying Lotus album should sound like, it totally obliterates any preconceptions about what can be released by a remotely popular contemporary musician.
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Oct 14, 2014You’re Dead! is a near-flawless examination of death as narrated by a virtuosic musician who has been exposed to a little too much of it.
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Oct 7, 2014You’re Dead! is his most confidently structured work yet.
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Oct 30, 2014It’s heavy in concept but sprightly and reverential in its execution, its hallucinatory breadth reminiscent of the outre jazz of Sun Ra and the wily funk of Parliament, of mid-’70s Miles Davis and Herbie Hancock.
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Oct 6, 2014Like his great aunt, and his great uncle John Coltrane, Ellison has created exceptionally progressive, stirring, and eternal art.
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Oct 6, 2014Less glitchy and bass-led than FlyLo’s previous work, it enters him in the canon of mystics and psychedelic journeyers who’ve sought to crack the doors of perception.
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Oct 6, 2014Flying Lotus has added a new realm to his universe, answering one of life's biggest questions in the process.
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Oct 6, 2014There is something new and exciting in Ellison’s bewildering synthesis, and something very original in his seemingly unlimited horizons.
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Oct 6, 2014You’re Dead! is arguably his most imposing album thus far.
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Oct 3, 2014Excitingly new yet classically evocative, You're Dead! is contemplative but never boring, an example of genre cross-pollination that transcends novelty and, occasionally, time and space as well.
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Nov 6, 2014You're Dead begs complete listens as a whole, with tracks just long enough to capture particular thoughts before you're pushed onward.
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MagnetNov 5, 2014His boldest, most impressive statement to date. [No. 114, p.55]
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Oct 2, 2014If Cosmogramma signalled Stephen Ellison's ambition to be more than a beatmaker, then this record is the accomplishment of that ambition. You're Dead! might be the most immortal Flying Lotus album to date.
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Oct 6, 2014Flying Lotus has the notion that death should be the only limiting factor, and when he's put out a work that wrings beauty out of that very thing, what's the point of fearing anything?
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The WireDec 15, 2014This is still a grand, holistic statement, superbly structured in its 38 minutes of ebb and flow. [Nov 2014, p.66]
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Q MagazineNov 13, 2014Rich in texture and tone, enlivened rather than swamped by guests and made thrilling by his ability to make his hyperactivity as restful as it is relentless. [Dec 2014, p.110]
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MojoNov 5, 2014This panoramic attempt to make sense of life's one certainty beyond taxes flutters far above the digital static of 2008's breakthrough Los Angeles into twisted, ethereal jazz territory. [Nov 2014, p.89]
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Oct 21, 2014Ellison makes the boldest, most fully engaged fusion of the hip-hop-laptop era.
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Oct 15, 2014One of the most accomplished releases of the year, You’re Dead! embraces the uncertain, celebrates fear, and induces a meditative consciousness that’s hard to shake after listening.
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Oct 14, 2014These disparate elements, influences, and guests could have made a mess of an ambitious album, but instead You're Dead turns out to be Flying Lotus' best yet.
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Oct 13, 2014The genius of Flying Lotus, which has been invariably present throughout his preceding releases, but most especially on You’re Dead!, is that he has an incredible ability to both illustrate and extract exceptional amounts of emotion, without saying much at all.
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Oct 10, 2014The whole album bleeds into one magnificent mess, thanks in part to some incredibly short track times, but also to the nature of the music itself.
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Oct 7, 2014You’re Dead! is experimental and often ambient, but has so much attention to detail and raw talent (Herbie Hancock, Angel Deradoorian, Kendrick Lamar) that it could never be background music.
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Oct 6, 2014You’re Dead is a madly inventive record, one that takes hip-hop and jazz as starting points, beats them both to death and then brings them back to life in an almost unrecognisable form.
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Oct 6, 2014While it may not be clear where we're headed throughout the album, Ellison maneuvers through the bedlam with such confidence that it's not just easy to get swept up in his grand vision of the Great Beyond, but to return for repeat visits.
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UncutOct 2, 2014A colorful fusion, blunted underground hip-hop flowing into delirious live bass jams and cosmic balladry. [Nov 2014, p.75]
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Oct 2, 2014This, his fifth album, is also an overt ode to limbo, the halfway house of consciousness and true death. And this is where all 19 tracks dwell, in between the failing light of traditional jazz and the bursts of neon emitted from his polyrhythmic, nocturnal electronica.
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Oct 2, 2014This is hyperactive music, pushed to its limits.
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Oct 9, 2014Save for a few stretches of inconsistent detours, You're Dead! is another reliable entry into the canon of one of the most brazen and forward-thinking producers out there.
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Oct 8, 2014The album works best as a single, unified listen.
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Oct 13, 2014You’re Dead! finds ways to keep things pumping.
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Oct 9, 2014He’s been wood-shedding like a jazz player for years, riffing on ideas and loops and textures the way a pianist learns their scales, and he can now confidently test those skills out on just about any combination of sounds out there, if only to see what happens. In some ways, this succeeds, and in others, it fails entirely.
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Oct 6, 2014For an LP about the infinite unknown, it isn't that meditative or self-aware. Where Cosmogramma and Los Angeles made plot secondary, You're Dead! forces its cast to bend to an unwieldy storyline that ultimately only makes complete sense inside Ellison's head.
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Oct 14, 2014You're Dead loses momentum after "Never Catch Me." Much of the later two-thirds of the album is more atmospheric, reminiscent of 2012's more contemplative "When the Quiet Comes."
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 196 out of 213
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Mixed: 5 out of 213
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Negative: 12 out of 213
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Oct 8, 2014
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Oct 8, 2014
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Oct 7, 2014