For two decades now, Los Angeles’ Steve Ellison, better known as Flying Lotus and Captain Murphy, has helped form and influence the shape of 21st century music. Growing up in LA, Ellison was immersed in a rich environment of artistic inspiration - with musical legends, Marilyn McLeod and Alice Coltrane in his family, and his interests spanned everything from beat-making to anime. By the late 2000s, his ability to incorporate jazz, hip-hop, and nebulous, futuristic elements had established him within LA’s famed Low End Theory and beyond. His albums on Warp Records feature names like David Lynch and Erykah Badu, and he’s produced on seminal records including Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp A Butterfly. BIG MAMA captures Ellison in a moment of spontaneous, unbridled momentum. Densely packed with disparate sounds, rhythms, and effects, the EP delivers what he describes as “experimental, maximalist, hyperfast, electronic burst of energy”, packing seven dynamic tracks into a single continuous composition in which every bar is unique, containing no loops throughout.
