{"id":9402,"date":"2026-03-13T17:16:00","date_gmt":"2026-03-13T17:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/flying-lotus-big-mama-review\/"},"modified":"2026-03-13T17:16:00","modified_gmt":"2026-03-13T17:16:00","slug":"flying-lotus-big-mama-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/flying-lotus-big-mama-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Flying Lotus Packs Big Excitement Into Brief \u2018Big Mama\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<figure><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static.spinmagazine.com\/files\/2022\/10\/Flying-Lotus_Matt_Lief_Anderson_0912-1.jpeg\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1212\" alt=\"Flying Lotus\"><figcaption>(photo: Matt Lief Anderson)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Steven Ellison keeps it moving. Ever since his first two albums as Flying Lotus \u2014 2006\u2019s <em>1983<\/em> and 2008\u2019s <em>Los Angeles <\/em>\u2014 he\u2019s produced great quantities of mercurial, glancing funk that\u2019s as likely to get your head nodding as it is to snap your neck. Ricocheting around the nexus of hip-hop, jazz and IDM, FlyLo\u2019s elegant machine music has always been too elusive and fusion-y to satisfy genre purists.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>But for all of its heady beat science, it carries an evanescent ethereality. Tracks abound with interesting kinetic activity, yet afterward they leave you with only scant recall of what just happened. Indeed, his songs seem to evaporate like Snapchat posts. The paradigmatic example of this might be 2014\u2019s <em>You\u2019re Dead!<\/em>, which has the feel of a surreal dream soundtrack where vignettes zip by with mercurial (il)logic.<\/p>\n<p>More from Spin:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.spinmagazine.com\/2025\/05\/road-work-farm-aid-newport-jazz\/\">Road Work: Farm Aid, Newport Jazz, Making Time \u221e<\/a>\n\t\t<\/li>\n<li>\n\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.spinmagazine.com\/2022\/10\/flying-lotus-vhs99-score\/\">Hear Flying Lotus\u2019 Score for His <i>V\/H\/S\/99<\/i> Horror Film Segment<\/a>\n\t\t<\/li>\n<li>\n\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.spinmagazine.com\/2022\/06\/flying-lotus-drops-double-single-with-vocalist-devin-tracy\/\">Flying Lotus Drops Double Single With Vocalist Devin Tracy<\/a>\n\t\t<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Which brings us to <em>Big Mama<\/em>, a seven-track Brainfeeder EP that flits by in under 14 minutes. Unlike most FlyLo efforts, <em>Big Mama<\/em> contains no guest musicians. Smart move, as Ellison has created one of his most concentrated and fascinating releases. \u201cCaptain Kernel\u201d tricks you into thinking it\u2019s glistening sunrise ambient before morphing into a facsimile of a mid-\u201970s George Duke fusion fantasia for candy ravers. Similarly, \u201cHorse Nuke\u201d begins with an eerie space drone, then blasts into frenetic, video-arcade dubstep.<\/p>\n<p>After an intro of piano romanticism, \u201cBrobobasher\u201d generates huge, bulbous kick drums that cohere into a stomping techno jam. The prankster-ish \u201cPink Dream\u201d flaunts maximalist beats and boisterous synth exhibitionism that would set Rick Wakeman\u2019s cape aflame, and \u201cAntelope Onigiri\u201d is madly psychedelic digital jazz with <em>Music Is Rotted One Note<\/em>-era Squarepusher in its DNA. Throughout, there\u2019s almost <em>too much<\/em> excitement packed into <em>Big Mama<\/em>\u2018s brief duration.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter size-large is-resized\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1290\" height=\"1290\" src=\"https:\/\/static.spinmagazine.com\/files\/2026\/03\/Flying-Lotus-1290x1290.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-656388\" style=\"width:658px;height:auto\" srcset=\"https:\/\/static.spinmagazine.com\/files\/2026\/03\/Flying-Lotus-1290x1290.jpg 1290w, https:\/\/static.spinmagazine.com\/files\/2026\/03\/Flying-Lotus-340x340.jpg 340w, https:\/\/static.spinmagazine.com\/files\/2026\/03\/Flying-Lotus-768x768.jpg 768w, https:\/\/static.spinmagazine.com\/files\/2026\/03\/Flying-Lotus-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/static.spinmagazine.com\/files\/2026\/03\/Flying-Lotus-498x498.jpg 498w, https:\/\/static.spinmagazine.com\/files\/2026\/03\/Flying-Lotus-1668x1668.jpg 1668w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1290px) 100vw, 1290px\"><\/figure>\n<p>To see our running list of the top 100 greatest rock stars of all time, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.spin.com\/2021\/07\/the-greatest-rock-stars-of-all-time\/?utm_source=yahoo&amp;utm_medium=bottomlink&amp;utm_campaign=yahoolink\">click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div style=\"margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;\" class=\"sharethis-inline-share-buttons\" ><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>(photo: Matt Lief Anderson) Steven Ellison keeps it moving. Ever since his first two albums as Flying Lotus \u2014 2006\u2019s 1983 and 2008\u2019s Los Angeles \u2014 he\u2019s produced great quantities&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[431,88],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-flying-lotus","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9402"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9402\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}