Around the time he released Los Angeles, I arranged an interview with Steven Ellison aka Flying Lotus. I tried for weeks to get hold of him, bent my own schedule around his; when we finally got on the horn, he was in a loud airport and seemed uninterested in talking to some random dude about J Dilla or his process. The connection was shaky anyway, so we just aborted the thing. As frustrating as that was for me and my editors, it gave me a better understanding-- and weirdly, respect-- for Ellison as a musician. Here was a guy concerned only with the making of beats and none of the attendant PR bullshit that accompanies being a hotshot producer.
That was about a year ago, and since then Ellison's single-mindedness has paid off, manifesting itself in the creation of his own new imprint, Brainfeeder, and no less than five albums of fresh or remixed material, most notably a triptych of EPs reimagining tracks from 2008's Los Angeles. The last in the series, L.A. EP 3 X 3, is also the most intriguing, a seven-track suite that features two new songs and a handful of bold recontextualizations (they're more than remixes, really) from friends and fellow leftfield beatmakers from his homebase of L.A. and abroad.
It's not surprising that Ellison would conceive a piece like this, since so much of his music relies on the deconstruction and re-configuration of sounds and ideas. The difference here is he's allowing others to do the same with his own material. Remarkably, much of L.A. EP 3 X 3 differs in style and tone from Ellison's previous beat-centric work, which is known for retaining a soulfulness amid its often complex, propulsive arrangements. Here, in place of the spliced-up Dillaisms of Los Angeles and his lesser known, but equally strong 1983, Ellison offers a textural ambient piece, music that falls somewhere between the electro-drone of Canadian composer Tim Hecker and the Eastern-tinged blissfulness of Rounds-era Four Tet.
Considering that most electronic-music producers take years to develop a singular style, it's no small feat for FlyLo to try on an alternate genre and mostly pull it off. His two original contributions to the album, the appropriately titled "Endless White" and "Spin Cycles", are most notable for showcasing that rare flexibility. The former is one of the record's standouts, where an undulating synth groan is set aflutter by distant bird chirps and ethereal vocal samples drifting in and out of the mix. "Spin Cycles" has a similar, though slightly more distorted feel. In it, a crowd of voices is processed into one, creating an unsettling group chant that FlyLo embellishes with bits of harp strumming and wonky analog bits. L.A. EP 3 X 3's remaining tracks, all handled in some way by other artists, share these songs' ghostly qualities.
Most of the guests here are affiliated with Ellison in some way, friends from a loose L.A. beat collective who share his weeded-out, future-forward aesthetic. If their remixes don't always improve upon the original tracks, they at least push the source material in compelling new directions. Dimlite (né Dimitri Grimm), a downtempo specialist who records for Sonar Kollektiv, reimagines Los Angeles' spare vocal closer "Infinitum" as a haunted, buzzing atmospheric number, with heavy Sunn O)))-style guitars and asymmetrical drumbeats filling out the arrangement. UK dubstep dude Breakage, the lone international contributor here, takes a similar course on his shoegaze-y "Bill's Suit Mix" of "Testament" and manages the best track of the bunch. He turns the breezy original into something fierce and ominous, stirring in angelic female vocals to soften his walls of guitar noise and storm-a-brewing drums.
Probably the most impressive thing about L.A. EP 3 X 3 is that, despite its many cooks in the kitchen, the record feels remarkably cohesive-- almost like the well-thought-out work of one artist. The intricate strings from harpist Rebekah Raff's "Auntie's Harp Remix" echo through FlyLo's "Spin Cycles", the droning elements from "Endless White" spill over into Take's clattering re-do of "Parisian Goldfish", and tiny pieces of tracks seem to reappear in others. The songs bleed into one another naturally and exist more as an album than a remix collection, which is an achievement in its own right. But more than that, L.A. EP 3 X 3 shows an exciting new side of Ellison, a producer who seems to be getting better as he progresses. We'll have to wait to find out how these new ideas coalesce on his next full-length, but if this album's any indication, we might be treated to something altogether different.
