FlyLo-sophical

Producer and DJ Flying Lotus
ponders his place in time

PURELY ACADEMIC: Flying Lotus

by MORGAN STEIKER

“I first started making beats when I was 14,” recalls California-based producer Steven Ellison, aka Flying Lotus. “I was making stuff on the MC 505, a Roland Groovebox.”

The beatsmith behind some of your favourite Adult Swim segues, FlyLo grew up as a musical outcast and a video game aficionado, always giving attention to stuff that other people didn’t really have time for. Maybe it’s his deeply rooted jazz lineage, being the great nephew of Alice Coltrane, that gives his sound that particular texture so rarely found today and most notably associated with a handful of producers like Madlib and J Dilla.

“I recently did a gig with my cousin Robbie [Coltrane], a jazz session in the basement of a hotel with all the best jazz musicians in L.A. At first, I didn’t wanna play, I just wanted to watch. But I did my thing and I held mine. What I do is part of the time and the culture.”

When he ponders the limitations and advantages of using a laptop as opposed to instruments, he sees things in a positive light. “The only limitations are those set by myself and my brain. There are no rules. I can do whatever I wanna do. As a producer in front of the computer most of the time, I’m starting to see all these artists as parts of my computer. They’re extensions of my palette, more layers, more texture, more sound.”

Now, after two albums, 1983 and Los Angeles, as well as half a dozen EPs, FlyLo is passing through Montreal to hold a workshop for the Red Bull Music Academy at Off the Hook and a show at Club Lambi. A graduate of the academy himself, he admits that the program took his artistry to another level.

“It was incredible and I got to meet some crazy folks. I lasted two weeks, they put us up in these really nice apartments and we got to make music all day. I made one of my more popular songs [“Tea Leave Dancers”] there and that song took my career into another chapter.”