“You’re Dead!” Eclectic and Introspective

“You’re Dead!” proclaims Flying Lotus with the title of his new album. For those with only a passing familiarity with Steven Ellison, the man behind Flying Lotus, the album’s menacing title immediately calls to mind a certain belligerence—especially when considered within the context of Ellison’s hip-hop roots. Someone picking this album up off the shelf will expect cocky, swaggering rap. But Ellison’s new album seems much more a meditation on death than a celebration of it—and, on this front, the album succeeds with aplomb.

In the same vein as Flying Lotus’s 2010 album, “Cosmogrammica,” “You’re Dead!” is a cohesive concept album—each song flows seamlessly into the next, creating a complex suite that somehow melds together despite Ellison’s schizophrenic variety of musical interests. Ellison’s style is highly complex and syncretic, drawing from jazz, electronica, old-school rap, new-school rap, and classic 8-bit sound, but his meticulous attention to each one somehow forces these disparate elements into a chilling whole. Ellison carefully builds each of his compositions from the ground up, deftly layering sound atop sound in a way that lets each musical element breathe and build upon its fellows. Nothing gets lost, nothing gets muddled—unless Ellison wants it to. But, for the most part, his pieces are remarkably lucid—cogently constructing each soundscape with a meticulous attention to detail and a respect for the unique qualities of each sound. This carefulness pays off on “Ready Err Not,” which starts with a simple, clopping 8-bit beat, stark in its simplicity. Ellison lets it play unfettered for a few seconds and then proceeds to add small bits of warbling, melancholic synth, periodically pausing to reveal the original beat underneath. As the song progresses, he adds more and more to the song, weaving a bleak melody that never lets you forget its origins.

Just as Ellison weaves songs out of sounds, so he weaves a suite out of individual songs. The album plays like a symphony, each song a movement. We see the skillful repetition of musical motifs within the album—there are quick chromatic saxophone licks that feature prominently on tracks like “Tesla,” “Cold Dead,” and “Moment of Hesitation.” “Siren Song,” “Turtles,” and “Obligatory Cadence” sample haunting female voices that provide the sonic background. “Ready Err Not” and “Dead Man’s Tetris” are steeped in video-game sound, with “Dead Man’s Tetris” going so far as to sample the original Tetris theme, which pulsates behind a carefully constructed cacophony of voices. But it’s not as though there are discrete categories that each song can be sorted into—these elements and other characteristics are woven into every track. Different themes are emphasized for different compositions, but most of the songs draw from the same wells in varying amounts. Sonically, this album is incredibly eclectic, but it’s consistent in its bases, giving “You’re Dead!” a remarkable unity.

Despite this unity of form, there are a few standouts in the album. In “Dead Man’s Tetris,” featuring Snoop Dogg and Ellison’s own rapper-alter-ego Captain Murphy, Ellison uses Snoop Dogg’s distinctive drawl as yet another sound in his repertoire to create a chaotic wall of sound that engulfs the listener. The mechanical vocals, whispers, screams, and gunshots in the background, combined with the austerity of the robotic voices and stark electronic beats commanding the foreground, creates a very real tension throughout the composition. Another standout is the slick “Never Catch Me,” which heavily features Kendrick Lamar’s signature manic vocals combined with a low-key, piano-based beat. The urgency and breathless nature of Kendrick’s rap melds with the cool piano lick to create a sensation of pursuer and pursued—and produces an image of a futile flight from death.

But many of Ellison’s solo tracks match his collaborative efforts in quality. “Coronus, the Terminator,” with its pulsating inevitability, celestial choral vocals, and fine R&B sensitivity, seems to radiate power in a calm yet utterly menacing way. “Cold Dead” is a clever vintage rock-jazz track, starting with a muddled guitar riff and melding it with stunning jazz lines. The song seems to breathe, almost, alternating high-speed, grungy guitar riffs with almost ethereal, fragile saxophone solos. “The Boys Who Died in Their Sleep,” which also features Ellison as Captain Murphy, has haunting, ethereal, spaced-out falsetto vocals backed by a low, menacing chorus. The song crescendos and decrescendos, accelerates and decelerates to produce an eerie, shape-shifting composition that never quite puts the listener at ease.

Ellison’s unity of subject and sound does contribute to a homogeneous mood within the album—it’s never triumphant, never elated—that’s pensive at its most optimistic and terrified at its least. But there’s not a piece on here that could in good conscience be called weak. The cohesion of this album, its stunning control and execution, musical eclecticism, and unflagging song strength make “You’re Dead!” a standout addition to Flying Lotus’s already-impressive catalogue and cements him as one of the premier voices in modern electronica.