Flying Lotus has never been one to stay on the grid. From the off-kilter instrumentals of 1983 through the psychotropic beatscapes of Cosmogramma to Spirit Box’s Lynchian neo-R&B, the one constant across Steven Ellison’s catalogue has been a playful disregard for established boundaries, both rhythmic and otherwise.
On his latest EP, though, Ellison has gone one step further. “There was no grid anymore, and there’s no time,” he says of the creative process behind BIG MAMA. “Time was malleable. That’s how I approached putting the music together, thinking about it like it’s a sketchbook, where there’s nothing telling you what it’s supposed to be. Instead of being confined to the BPM or the time signature that’s on the screen, I just treated the sound like sound.”
