A Nice Little Music Video

Flying Lotus is a big underground name in music. If you're keyed in to the scene, chances are you either know of him or your favorite guy/band/whatever is into him. Hard to miss this guy. Part of this is cause the music is, well, fantastic and not like much else of what's being done today. But this isn't about the music, it's about a nice little music video he did released recently.

It's a really simple little thing. I'm not here to marvel at the production or anything like that. I just want to comment on my appreciation for it, and how it nails the exact feeling of the song without dipping into crazed antics.

The song Never Catch Me is basically about death and our attempts at trying to evade it. It will happen. But damn it if we won't spend every waking moment of our life in defiance of it. The song's far more impressive then that little description makes it seem but the point stands. Now, the music video for this could have been a bummer. The first minute or so kind of is. These two young kids lie dead in a casket and it's not exactly happy times. But they rise up and dance. And they dance their absolute asses off. I had listened to that song one hundred times before but the core sentiment of it never hit me quite as hard as it did until I watched the video. They dance their way out of the church and into the street and then end up in a hearse and drive off, smiles blazing. It's just fantastic all around. Just goes to show, sometimes simple is the way to go.

(P.S. On an execution level, it shows that the 4:3 aspect ratio should not be merely reserved for old television and that if utilized properly you can make some real interesting stuff happen.

Flying Lotus transports his fans to a magical place with Layer Three

The popular electronic music artist and DJ, Flying Lotus, is constantly attempting to push the bar in whatever he does. With his newest album, "Until The Quiet Comes", Flying Lotus has produced music that is entirely unique, sounds that have never been heard before. To accompany that music on tour, Flying Lotus wanted a visual effect that was rare and exclusive to his music. His solution: Layer Three.

Layer Three can be broken down into its three layers. Flying Lotus is placed in between two transparent scrims, which represent the three layers, a front scrim, the DJ, and the back scrim. On the front scrim there is a series of images front projected that vibe off the music. Next is Flying Lotus who is performing a live DJ set via Ableton. Behind Flying Lotus is the back scrim, which has images back projected onto it. Each scrim is being controlled by a separate person, who is live-mixing the images onto the screen. Each show is entirely unique in both the music being performed and the images projected. Strangeloop, the artist controlling the front screen, attempts to create and project images that play off of the music, releasing a unique vibe to the audience. Timeboy controls the back screen and he projects images that display the place or environment Flying Lotus is attempting to take the fans with his performance. Both artists mix the images using a program called resolume avenue.

My roommate, Tyler Dance, is the one who turned me onto Flying Lotus and Layer Three. He got the chance to go see Layer Three live in Philadelphia last April, and said it was the "trippiest most memorizing shit I ever done did see ever" and that "it looked like magic." I unfortunately did not get the opportunity to go with him, and I have to experience the performance via Youtube, but I am still very impressed with everything Flying Lotus is doing. Whether he is creating new musical genres or a unique performance, Flying Lotus raises the bar with everything he does.

Duality

29 year old producer, Steven Ellison, also known as Flying Lotus, and Captain Murphy, has always had a very alternative approach music, and art itself. One of his early albums, entitled "Cosmogramma," touched on how experimental Flying Lotus's career is, and hinted at what direction he could potentially be going. His other alias, Captain Murphy, first was presented last year with a anonymous Youtube account during the summer of 2012. Fans began speculating the identity of the unknown artist based on the musical stylings, content, and other collaborative musicians. Upon the arrival of the date of his first mixtape release, he posted via Twitter a link to a website: http://captainmurphy.xxx/. It is a link to a rather empty website, containing a single thirty-six minute video. There is a huge lack of context with the clips chosen, it contains everything from cartoons, to pornography, to 1980 films. The general theme of the video is that Captain Murphy is a cult leader and he is attempting to recruit you into his cult, telling you to "join our elite mission to save the world," and that "it doesn't sound like your friends and family love you if they can't support your new decision. Maybe you should stay away from them. It is unhealthy for you to be around unenlightened people anyway." The video is broken into seven "lessons," that all promote similar things to the quotes listed above. It is still unclear the context and the motives of this video. Steven Ellison claims that he never wanted credit as the identity behind Captain Murphy which further illustrates his alternative approach to art and his desire to say and do what others will not.

Here is Duality: