Flying Lotus - Until the Quiet Comes

Flying Lotus is an experimental, instrumental, plain old mental, hip-hop producer from California.  Over the past several years, he has broken many barriers for this genre of music, as well as making quite a name for himself by producing for other interesting artists such as Gonja Sufi and Thundercat.  This year, he has also broken into rapping under the pseudonym "Captain Murphy".

Each of his previous albums have been released to heavy critical acclaim, including his last work, "Cosmogramma," which was a fantastic and energetic union of jazz inspired hip hop and eccentric noise.  Its very evident in this new work that Flying Lotus has taken what he demonstrated on that album and presented in a more controlled form, and in many ways "Until the Quiet Comes" feels like a very organic progression from that album.  The pacing however, feels fairly relaxed and more similar to "Los Angeles" than Cosmogramma.  Also, even though many of the sounds on this album are sampled, they feel as crisp and real as if they were recorded in one take, jazz style.

One thing you will immediately notice about Until the Quiet Comes is the kick drums, which are astronomically huge.  On the tracks "Getting There," "Tiny Tortures," "Sultan's Request," and "Me Yesterday//Corded" they just grab you by your head and force it to bob, you simply have no choice.  The songs that stay away from strong hip-hop influences on this album are consistently spacey and atmospheric, so they provide some nice space in between the more energetic moments.

Like I said before, this feels like a very organic and smooth progression from his last album, but one of my complaints about Flying Lotus actually follows from this same point.  In many ways Until the Quiet Comes does not feel different enough.  If he had released all these tracks with the same cover art as Cosmogramma, I feel like I would not have been able to tell the difference between the two works

I also feel that most of the individual songs get somewhat lost to me.  Other than the singles, many of his songs pass right by me without notice.   I think this is an unavoidable consequence of having a large number of short tracks on each album that all flow seamlessly into one another.  It builds a strong atmosphere, but I had to go back and actually search track by track to find the ones I liked.  I generally liked this album, but it was not distinct in my mind at all.  Without it leaving any sort of lasting impression on me, I find it hard to say that it was one of his better works, but if you are fan of Flying Lotus, you will definitely enjoy it.