Flying Lotus You're Dead!

In 1973, Alice Coltrane made Lord of Lords, which followed the avant-garde jazz artist’s creative and spiritual evolution following the death of her husband John. One could make the parallel to Flying Lotus’ fifth album, You’re Dead!, especially given that its chief creator/musician, Steven Ellison—Coltrane’s great-nephew—not only channeled his own grief, but adopted a transcendent, if musically disjointed view of the afterlife. You’re Dead! also fits on Ellison’s time line, blending the meditative and opaque atmospheres of 2012’s Until the Quiet Comes with the urban jazz dystopia of 2010’s Cosmogramma. The hip-hop influence is more pronounced and traditional here—credit collaborations by Kendrick Lamar (“Never Catch Me”) and Snoop Dogg (“Dead Man’s Tetris”)—while the riff complexity (see “Cold Dead”) hearkens back to Queen, Ellison’s most curious inspiration. His celestial low-end theory becomes shamanistic toward the end—not unlike the catharsis of his great-aunt’s aforementioned work, but still espousing a singular aesthetic all Ellison’s own.