“Turn off that iPad – tonight I’m going to make you feel something,” commands Flying Lotus, AKA Steven Ellison, to a member of the audience filming him. He makes good on his promise: tonight’s performance is a mind-warping audiovisual treat for all the senses.
Ellison has come up with a unique solution to the challenge of how you make the “guy twiddling knobs and playing on a laptop” show come alive: he’s encased himself in a futuristic, high-tech cube called Layer³, as all manner of flashing 3D animations – tentacles, eyeballs and animals – emanate from it, with Ellison controlling the sounds from within. It gives him the appearance of a sonic sorcerer as, wearing a mask and illuminated bug-eyed goggles, he summons sounds, raising his hands and dropping them again, as the team controlling the visuals react to his music in real time. At the end of the show he salutes them: “There’s no pre-set anything – we’re jamming together.”
It all makes for a thrillingly immersive spectacle, but it never feels like Ellison is hiding behind it. And, while the rich, jazzy tapestries of his records focus more on the cerebral side of things, here it’s rawer, with gut-churning bass and trippy hip-hop beats blending seamlessly together.
There are tracks from new album You’re Dead – during the bewitching Coronus, The Terminator, a huge grim reaper appears at the side of the stage – but Ellison also throws in other treats, the highlight of which is a medley from the video game Final Fantasy VII.
Later, he emerges from the cube to perform as Captain Murphy, his rapping alter ego, for a superb Dead Man’s Tetris. By the time he’s encored with Shake Weight and given shout-outs to both drugs and Jameson whiskey, it’s clear we’re witnessing one of the most imaginative artists around. Feel something, we most certainly did.
• Flying Lotus Q&A – as it happened
• You’re Dead CD review – brilliant, wide-eye dream of an album
