Flying Lotus - Los Angeles
[Warp]

Genre's are for wimps. Keep up! Why hang your hoody on a single sonic coathook when you have an entire cloakroom to choose from? In fact Warp's newest crusader of bleep, Flying Lotus, doesn't need a musical jacket at all and over his 17 track sophomore LP, opts simply to go naked and throw himself deliriously at just about every electronic sub-genre this side of 'Blue Lines'.

Only two tracks on 'Los Angeles' threaten the 4 minute mark and this is more about IPM than BPM - that'd be 'I' for ideas by the way. Stagger hop, slip hop, slime n' bass, bassline, trip-hop-house, breaks and J Dilla-drop - and hang on, did I mention the analogue-drone, the found sounds and the Prefuse nod sample mangle? Keep up!

In just 3 minutes 39 seconds of 'GNG BNG' we manage to cross Arabic inflected horn and bitcrush bass before topping the whole thing off with a face-slap of Big Beat bounce. Keep up! FlyLo aka Steven Ellison is it transpires a distant relation of Alice Coltrane and his nan' wrote for Diana Ross, so its heritage rather than happy accident that upderpins the adventure.

Stevie E's production is by turns slick, crisp, soft and smokey and he romances his various whims with equal aplomb, although in midst of the style slalom, its sometimes difficult to know whether to dance or drown. The only thing that 'Los Angeles' lacks is a defining moment - there is no 'Freak', no 'Windowlicker' - this is an ensemble piece, one of narrative rather than floor filler/time filler dynamic.

The iPod may have given birth to the shuffle-and-see generation, but Warp aren't going out on a limb here - 'LA' is attention hunting enough to keep fingers away from the skip button and at just under 45 minutes doesn't outstay its welcome.

After recent flirtations with NME bothering guitar bands, its comforting to know that Warp are still a label driving the bandwagon rather than hanging desperately to the back and in case anyone was uncertain, minimal is well and truly dead...Genre's are for wimps. Keep up.

Los Angeles Tracklisting:

1. Brainfeeder
2. Breathe Something/Stellar Star
3. Beginners Falafel
4. Camel
5. Melt
6. Comet Course
7. Orbit 405
8. Golden Diva
9. Riot
10. GNG BNG
11. Parisian Goldfish
12. Sleepy Dinosaur
13. RobertaFlack - Flying Lotus & Dolly
14. SexSlaveShip
15. Auntie's Harp
16. Testament - Flying Lotus & Gonja Sufi
17. Auntie's Lock Infinitum - Flying Lotus & Laura Darlington