Los Angeles has become quite the hub of forward thinking musical adventure of late, thanks to the work of visionary experimentalists such as Daedalus, Gonjasufi, Ras G and the African Space Programme and Gaslamp Killer. But perhaps the scene’s leading ambassador is Steven Ellison, aka Flying Lotus, whose kaleidoscopic mix of genres has made him one of the hottest producers around.
His third album, Cosmogramma, finds him sifting through musical history and splicing together a remarkable array of styles, with consistently winning results. Much of the record is considerably more uptempo than Fly-Lo’s previous outing, Los Angeles, with a number of tracks propelled forward by breakneck beats. It’s the idiosyncratic touches that really surprise and enthral: the 8-bit keyboards on ‘Clock Catcher’; the jazz bass on ‘Pickled’; the harp glissandos on ‘Intro A/A Cosmic Drama’.

Thom Yorke – who has been keeping a keen eye on developments in the LA underground – pops up on ‘And The World Laughs With You’, his vocals alternately sped-up and cut-to-ribbons, with the central refrain being the very Yorke-ian “I need to know you’re out there somewhere.” Elsewhere, Flying Lotus ventures into dreamy trip-hop on ‘Zodiac Shit’, gets his groove on with the Orb-like ‘Do The Astral Plane’, and creates a new genre (ambient glitch maybe?) on ‘Mmmhmm’.
That’ll be one of the albums of the year, then.