RECORD OF THE WEEK
8 / 10 Until the Quiet Comes by Flying Lotus Genre: Electronic Stephen Ellis aka Flying Lotus has a knack for complex production that packs in a lot of ideas and idioms. Over the course of his career, he has packed worlds of electro-IDM, J Dilla-isms, Jazz Fusion and avant-garde chamber into his music. His previous release Cosmogramma is an incredible score that blends all of those ideas into a continuous flow. But compared to the maximal and dense Cosmogramma, Ellis’s new record Until the Quiet Comes hits more, well, quiet. Until the Quiet Comes is a more constrained effort of Flying Lotus but still empowering.
Opposed to manic percussion and holy strings flashing throughout, Flying Lotus lets sounds manifest organically while giving out a hum of an electronic pulse. But this record should not be mistaken as minimal or ambient. Many ideas are condensed in these tracks and given a lot more room to breathe. Take “Getting There” that refreshes with cosmic string work with stomp of a breakbeat that echoes his previous work. Or the more tangible “Putty Boy Strut” naturally flows childish synth-bits, club claps, and jazz-fusion bass noodling, all summed with the dramatic string coda. All of his signature ideas are present, existing calmly in a meditative state. Until the Quiet Comes expands the complex electronica of Flying Lotus fluidly into a bigger, spiritual realm.
*Check out: “Getting There”
SINGLES OF THE WEEK
Muse launches the political spirit that powered The Resistance off the face of the earth. Packed in with ridiculous amounts of special effects, it’s more comforting to view The 2nd Law as some sci-fi Rock opera come to life than any serious manifesto.
Dramatic strings of “Supremacy” and its marching drums presents a cheeseball combo of Metallica’s chamber-metal fusion S&M and Star Wars opera grandeur. “Survival” snaps across theater pianos with a mystic choir then giving a majestic all-out Metal riff.
Muse doesn’t forget to bring the sci-fi to modern times, breaking it down with EDM drops in “Follow Me” and the closing dystopian mini Dubstep suite “The 2nd Law” that can rightfully be pointed as the final firework of the whole album. It’s a feat The 2nd Law manages not to implode after everything they try. Although Muse work out some commendable songs (“Madness,” “Animals”) it’s not enough to save this epic that’s too much for its own good.
*Check out: “Madness”