Steven Ellison is riffing about jazz and death. He has been doing a lot of this since his fifth album as Flying Lotus, You're Dead, arrived last year.
Let’s start with the jazz, although his fascination with the form is not new. You’d expect nothing less from Alice Coltrane’s nephew. Over the years, Ellison as FlyLo has expertly negotiated electronic, hip-hop and jazz waters on his odyssey to bring you sounds with rainbow-coloured shades and stripes. With every passing album, though, jazz has become more and more of a primary colour in that spectrum for what Ellison is trying to achieve.
“It’s the old-school jazz mentality that I connect with the most,” he says. “I dig the idea of the seeker, the guy who’s always trying to figure out why he is doing music and trying to understand and make sense of his instrument in a world which deals with rigid instruction.”
Ellison is encouraged by what he and his peers are doing now, by how those old-school jazz players operated. "I remember watching a Ken Burns jazz documentary, and I was basically hearing about the future. All these guys were talking about Charlie Parker and Thelonious Monk and Miles Davis and John Coltrane, and I was seeing all these parallels of how it intersects with the beats scene or any kind of electronic scene today.
“You can see how the scene was built in stages and platforms and how the mentality and insights of a lot of the musicians reflects a lot of what is happening now in the scene I know best. Like, you can go from Sun Ra to Ras G. I take comfort from the fact that what I do has been seen before with different sounds and in a different time. We’ve done this before; it sounded different, but it worked.”
Ellison believes the time is right for new movements and scenes, like the one building up around his Brainfeeder label, to have an impact. “A lot of people don’t realise that similar scenes exist today and that they’re so big and influential. Just as there’s an underground electronic scene in many cities, there’s also a jazz scene.
"Part of what I like to do with Brainfeeder is to get the younger kids hearing jazz, because they don't know where to go to really hear it. Brainfeeder gives me a platform to put out people like Kamasi Washington or Austin Peralta. It's a great way for the scenes to build. It's the same with Kendrick [Lamar] and To Pimp a Butterfly. I don't know what its ultimate influence will be, but I'm glad that he is f***ing with jazz."
Collaboration chemistry
The old-school jazz players Ellison admires knew about the chemistry behind collaborations, something he is always keen to explore. You're Dead's multitalented cast of stars includes Lamar, Herbie Hancock, Snoop Dogg and Angel Deradoorian (Dirty Projectors), as well as such regular collaborators as Stephen "Thundercat" Bruner, Miguel Atwood-Ferguson and Brendon Small.
“It’s very rare for me to seek out artists and for it to work in the way I want it to work,” Ellison says. “I live my life and these people come into my orbit. That’s more fruitful in the long run than having a list and ticking names off, because it’s more honest. All those collaborations happened naturally, because the universe makes sense of things at the right time. There’s some kind of magic about being in the right place at the right time with people.
“I wanted to work with Kendrick, for example, but it wouldn’t have happened if we hadn’t been working on something that he was doing. I was working on a visual thing for his shows, and that turned into a musical thing, but it took the visual thing for us to connect in the first place.”
Similar synchronicity brought Snoop Dogg to Ellison’s gaff. “I love Snoop – I grew up with his music – but I never thought for a second that we’d work together. He interviewed me for his Double G News Network. We started talking about the album, and he said it sounded amazing, and he recorded for it right afterwards. That’s synergy. I didn’t seek him out, but it happened.”
What’s interesting to hear about is Ellison’s working relationship in the studio with one of those old-school cats he admired so much, Herbie Hancock.
“On the first day I played Herbie some stuff he instantly knew where I was trying to go. Instantly. He would play some stuff and I would focus in on moments, and every phrase and change was then worked out. Having Thundercat there was really helpful, as he was able to articulate the changes and whatnot. It was just amazing to have him around and to share my ideas with him – and for him not to think I was a dick or some guy who didn’t know anything.
“It gave me a lot of confidence to do the album. I’m a guy who can’t play nearly as well as him or write music in that traditional way, so it felt kind of weird at first. But it helped me understand that the people I have around me are capable of conveying my ideas. Curiosity is hugely important, too, because it’s curiosity about what I’ve not done yet which fuels my enthusiasm to pursue ideas and different art and different music.”
Life’s final moment
The other constant in the album, from the title to the themes, is death. Ellison wanted to make a record that wondered what that final moment of life would be like from a variety of viewpoints.
“I expected to have to talk about death a little bit afterwards but not to the extent that I have done. Having to talk about death so much made me stir up so many feelings. Death and grief take people to some places they just don’t expect to go. There’s a lot of people who are death deniers, because they’ve probably never had to deal with it happening to someone close to them.
“I feel like I’ve lost so many people in my life that I react to it differently now. People are meant to leave at some point, and people don’t want to accept that. They want to believe that Grandma will live forever; they want to believe that their parents will see their grandchildren. But it’s not promised. Death is a reality, and one day I’m not going to be here any more, and whatever’s next might not be that bad either.”
Yet when Ellison remembers making You're Dead he remembers the good times rather than the heavy themes. "If I'm honest, I had the most fun I've ever had in my life making this record. I felt so connected to the source of ideas and shit, I felt totally tuned in. It was like a joyful feeling for me to be making music, right down to doing the packaging and artwork, so it was strange to have to talk about death so much."
Flying Lotus plays Vicar Street, Dublin, on April 29th
