Flamagra

New album Flamagra, a spaced-out funk epic that’s much more soothing than its predecessor, proves Ellison has grown as a producer.

Flamagra plays like a staggered daydream, where you occasionally return to consciousness, only to slip back into slumber soon after.

Even more than a Lynchian album, Flamagra is nothing if not a FlyLo album. As usual he lends himself to superlatives and clichés, the sign of a singular artist (there’s another) about whom there just aren’t that many descriptors.

It’s not a reversal of normal Flying Lotus material. We’re still dealing with confusion exemplified as a messy but ultimately rewarding tracklist, fear exemplified as music that is just off enough that it could feel terrifying, depression exemplified as little quirks and late starts scattered like jacks and marbles. The difference is that, for once, he’s not trying to fight it all off.

Ellison remains keen on confronting and articulating his inner quarrels in the name of taking weirdness to the masses, and in doing so writing a new chapter in the pantheon of great Afrofuturist music.

Flamagra isn’t the first Flying Lotus album that can be enjoyed from beginning to end, but it still feels special. There’s a unity among these songs that exude emotion, like the warm comfort provided by a flame.

The net effect is a host of sounds and voices being drawn to Flamagra, much as a Quincy Jones opus involved dozens of contributors, some famous, others known only by professional reputation. If it all sounds vaporous at times, or even predictable to listeners long familiar with Flying Lotus’ sound, then at least it represents his growth into a full-fledged record producer, someone capable of straight-up great songwriting as well as engagingly electronic funk.

Flamagra is still more accessible than either Quiet or Dead! and this is most likely due to Ellison’s choice of vocal collaborators. [Jul 2019, p.49]

In 27 short tracks, Flamagra creates a vivid, memorable collage of L.A. life circa 2019, speaking to both the complicated present and the imaginative future of the city Flying Lotus calls home.

There are lots of ideas here, and lots of notes--a plus or a minus depending on your mindset--distributed over 27 tracks, nearly half of which clock in under two minutes. Some of these short sketches provide the most delicious moments.

His arrangements stay wondrous as usual, carrying a gravitas that hasn’t been present in his recent creative (see: non-musical) work.

Flamagra--a playful yet melancholic, skittish yet meditative 67 minutes of cosmic genius--is one of Flying Lotus’s most accessible releases.

The album feels confessional, courageous. ... Yes it can be bleak as hell but Flamagra's artistic artistic triumphs are sublimely uplifting. [Jul 2019, p.92]

Musically, it's still dense and intense, with funk, jazz and electronics rubbing up against bumpy hip-hop. But the heavyweight line-up brings with it a welcome focus on songs. [Jul 2019, p.110]

Flamagra reminds us just how good Flying Lotus sounds when soundtracking transcendence.

Flamagra may not comprise nearly as elaborate a world as those that Lynch conjures, and it doesn’t push Ellison’s art forward in the same way that You’re Dead! did. But the afterlife is a hard act to follow, and in the light of that flame on the hill, Flamagra makes for an engaging way station.

While Bruner has always made his presence known on Flying Lotus' work, Flamagra feels like a direct relative to Thundercat's Drunk, an album which equally levelled-up on its scale and ambition. At a whopping 66:57, it's easy to get lost in Ellison's latest offering, and not in the dreamy, psychedelic manner of his previous, trimmer work.

Everything on Flamagra sounds amazing. The beats are crisp and crunchy, the synths and loops are tight and catchy, the basslines are deep and wobbly and the vocals floating above it all take centre stage, but because everything sounds so perfectly measured it’s hard to get excited about the next song, as it all merges into one long sixty-two minute listening experience.

For someone who makes music so precise and demanding, this means that Flying Lotus’ latest album is a harder one to digest, and ultimately isn’t quite as essential as his previous.

The album sags in a way that his previous work never did (much like Michael Jackson’s Dangerous, which inspires its artwork). He remains an inventive and interesting producer, however, and there are significant patches of brilliance on Flamagra that make it a worthwhile listen.

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.

A flawed masterpiece that infuriates as often as it dazzles. [Jul 2019, p.28]

FlyLo is the trickiest of acquired tastes, and some listeners just really won't have the patience to wait for this LP to unfurl. For those who do, a reward awaits. Flamagra, like the man who made it, is an island of its own: often beautiful, sometimes baffling, totally inimitable.

First, there is almost nothing here that is objectively difficult to listen to. Most of the material goes down rather easily, and indeed some of it seems more than accessible. The paradox that confronts us here (and elsewhere), though, is that this is a largely frictionless experience. It feels as if the album doesn't ever get quite weird enough somehow, and there are frequent rather non-descript jazzy interludes that don't so much provide connective tissue as they merely put us into a slightly vapid holding pattern ("Remind U", "Debbie Is Depressed", "FF4", and passim).

Despite its charismatic Tierra Whack verse, Yellow Belly plays more like a gag than an epiphany, and the clanks and warbles of Fire Is Coming fill Lynch’s eerie tale with dread but little replay value. Still, the quagmire draws you in.