Album Reviews
Flying Lotus, Cosmogramma [Warp]
Paste Magazine, May 2010
http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2010/05/flying-lotus-cosmogramma.html
MC transcends jazz, hip-hop, space and time
The third album from Los Angeles-based producer Flying Lotus (nee Steven Ellison) is an engrossing exploration of sonic possibility. Featuring contributions from Thom Yorke, vocalist Laura Darlington, bass producer Thundercat and jazz instrumentalist Ravi Coltrane, it’s a study in contrasts: provoking but reassuring, kinetic but focused, clean but clattering.
Ellison belongs to an international collective that stretches from the depths of L.A.—where he, Daedelus, Nosaj Thing and Gaslamp Killer, lit by the glow of their laptops, host a weekly club night known as Low End Theory—to the industrial heights of Glasgow, the territory of experimental production queen Mary Anne Hobbs. The magnetic live experience of Low End Theory is writ large on this album, which draws both from those complex layers of sound (so different from the measured hip-hop beats dominating the airwaves) and from Ellison’s family history. His aunt, the late Alice Coltrane—that great jazz multi-instrumentalist and swamini of a California ashram—gave him the freewheeling vocabularies of both jazz and space-conscious East Indian spirituality, heirlooms on which Cosmogramma banks heavily.
Though it lacks a narrative frame, the album manages to remain stylistically and thematically cohesive. In the first 10 minutes, the beats build almost frantically, then relax into a dreamy spiral and spike again; Yorke and Darlington’s vocals highlight Ellison’s swirling sounds, giving them sonic edges. The Radiohead frontman’s dreamy musings on “…And the World Laughs with You” aren’t an intrusion, but they work better as gleams and fragments on “Do The Astral Plane,” a track that begins with playful scatting and settles into a deep swinging groove, backed by impeccable percussion.
Flying Lotus has truly mastered the silicon machine: His byte-and-bass combo screams, buzzes and pounds through ever-shifting beats, which clink with mantra-like repetition until they suddenly give way to a universe of unforeseen noise. On Cosmogramma, this never-ending stream of aural textures sounds effortless, and the enthralling swirl of jazz, drum ’n’ bass, dubstep and hip-hop beckons you toward the edge of something damn near cosmic.
Paste Magazine, May 2010
http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2010/05/flying-lotus-cosmogramma.html
MC transcends jazz, hip-hop, space and time
The third album from Los Angeles-based producer Flying Lotus (nee Steven Ellison) is an engrossing exploration of sonic possibility. Featuring contributions from Thom Yorke, vocalist Laura Darlington, bass producer Thundercat and jazz instrumentalist Ravi Coltrane, it’s a study in contrasts: provoking but reassuring, kinetic but focused, clean but clattering.
Ellison belongs to an international collective that stretches from the depths of L.A.—where he, Daedelus, Nosaj Thing and Gaslamp Killer, lit by the glow of their laptops, host a weekly club night known as Low End Theory—to the industrial heights of Glasgow, the territory of experimental production queen Mary Anne Hobbs. The magnetic live experience of Low End Theory is writ large on this album, which draws both from those complex layers of sound (so different from the measured hip-hop beats dominating the airwaves) and from Ellison’s family history. His aunt, the late Alice Coltrane—that great jazz multi-instrumentalist and swamini of a California ashram—gave him the freewheeling vocabularies of both jazz and space-conscious East Indian spirituality, heirlooms on which Cosmogramma banks heavily.
Though it lacks a narrative frame, the album manages to remain stylistically and thematically cohesive. In the first 10 minutes, the beats build almost frantically, then relax into a dreamy spiral and spike again; Yorke and Darlington’s vocals highlight Ellison’s swirling sounds, giving them sonic edges. The Radiohead frontman’s dreamy musings on “…And the World Laughs with You” aren’t an intrusion, but they work better as gleams and fragments on “Do The Astral Plane,” a track that begins with playful scatting and settles into a deep swinging groove, backed by impeccable percussion.
Flying Lotus has truly mastered the silicon machine: His byte-and-bass combo screams, buzzes and pounds through ever-shifting beats, which clink with mantra-like repetition until they suddenly give way to a universe of unforeseen noise. On Cosmogramma, this never-ending stream of aural textures sounds effortless, and the enthralling swirl of jazz, drum ’n’ bass, dubstep and hip-hop beckons you toward the edge of something damn near cosmic.
D. Black, Aali'yah
SoundNW Magazine, September 2009
http://www.scribd.com/doc/19540760/DBlack-AliYah-Review-Sound-NW-Magazine
SoundNW Magazine, September 2009
http://www.scribd.com/doc/19540760/DBlack-AliYah-Review-Sound-NW-Magazine
D. Black's latest, greatest album is Ali'yah, which is Hebrew for "ascend." It's a fitting title for an album that transcends the rest of his catalog, both in terms of absolute filthy as well as in lyrical high-mindedness. Not in a bad way, either; the Sportn' Life emcee might not be bragging about the clubs anymore, or swearing up a storm, but his delivery is doper than ever and he's getting at a higher truth not often expressed in rap by someone this talented. After his undeniably hard-hitting track on Jake One’s White Van Music, released nationally by Rhymesayers last year, it was clear D. Black was growing stronger as an emcee and a lyricist. Ali’yah tracks like "Closer To Yah" and “Yesterday,” which also features a Jake One beat, cement that. The beats are lush, triumphant, soulful; Black’s lyrics are full of hope and wonder at the new, spiritual wealth he has discovered as a father and a deeply religious man. Even if you’re not a particularly religious person yourself, you’d have to have a heart of stone and an aversion to genius to sincerely dislike D. Black’s masterpiece of an album. Now, how do we go about convincing the emcee—who has said on record that this is his last album—to continue writing music?
Khingz, From Slaveships To Spaceships
SoundNW Magazine, July 2009
SoundNW Magazine, July 2009
| khingz_review_sound_7-09.pdf |
"...This deeply revelatory, transformative album is the kind that can only come from years of crashing repeatedly into the toughest and best that life has to offer. "This is what my liberation sounds like, "the emcee says in the introduction to "Heaven Made This," a song about what he describes as the "terrifying and beautiful" nature of emotional and psychological freedom. Khingz' liberation, from the sound of this album, was fought for ounce-by-ounce; after a few listens, you'll practically be able to feel the artist's war-torn tested heartbeat through the lyrics. It's that good. FSTS's beats vary between giddily triumphant, contemplative and hot like the face of a man intimately close to the woman he loes. Production from Toast, Sabzi of the Blue Scholars and Dead Noise, amongothers, is strong enough to stand up to Khingz' heartfelt rapping, which slips in and out of double-time, defiant and wise..."
