''Flamagra'' is the sixth studio album by American record producer
Flying Lotus
Steven Ellison (born October 7, 1983), known by his stage name Flying Lotus or sometimes FlyLo, is an American record producer, DJ, filmmaker and rapper from Los Angeles. He is also the founder of the record label Brainfeeder.
Flying Lotus ha ...
(Steven Ellison), released on May 24, 2019 by
Warp Records
Warp Records (or simply Warp) is a British independent record label founded in Sheffield in 1989 by record store employees Steve Beckett and Rob Mitchell and record producer Robert Gordon.Southern, Richard (2003) "Label of Love: WARP", X-RAY, ...
. It is his first album since 2014's ''
You're Dead!
''You're Dead!'' is the fifth studio album by American music producer Flying Lotus, released on October 6, 2014 by Warp Records. Flying Lotus recorded the album at his home in Los Angeles, using Ableton Live and other instruments and software. L ...
''. The lead single, the spoken-word "Fire Is Coming" featuring
David Lynch, was released along with its video on April 17, 2019. The album also features contributions from
Anderson .Paak,
George Clinton,
Little Dragon
Little Dragon are a Swedish electronic music band from Gothenburg, Sweden, formed in 1996. The band consists of Yukimi Nagano (vocals, percussion), Erik Bodin (drums), Fredrik Wallin (bass) and Håkan Wirenstrand (keyboards).
Little Dragon' ...
,
Tierra Whack
Tierra Helena Whack (born August 11, 1995) is an American rapper, singer, and songwriter. She originally performed as "Dizzle Dizz" as a teenager, but later on reverted to her birth name in 2017. Her debut studio album, ''Whack World'', was releas ...
,
Denzel Curry
Denzel Rae Don Curry (born February 16, 1995) is an American rapper and singer. Born and raised in Carol City, Florida, Curry started rapping while in the sixth grade and began working on his first mixtape in 2011. Influenced by underground Flo ...
,
Shabazz Palaces
Shabazz Palaces is an American hip hop group from Seattle led by Ishmael Butler a.k.a. Palaceer Lazaro (formerly Butterfly of jazz rap group Digable Planets). Much of the Butler's work as Shabazz Palaces has been made in collaboration with mult ...
,
Thundercat,
Toro y Moi
Chaz Bear (born Chazwick Bradley Bundick; November 7, 1986), known professionally as Toro y Moi, is an American singer, songwriter, record producer, and graphic designer. He is often recognized as a spearhead of the chillwave genre in the 2010s ...
and
Solange
Solange (died 10 May, c. 880) was a Frankish shepherdess and a locally venerated Christian saint and cephalophore, whose cult is restricted to Sainte-Solange, Cher. Saint Solange was the patron of the traditional Province of Berry, of which C ...
.
A deluxe version of the album with the instrumentals was released on May 29, 2020.
Background
Ellison said that he had gathered different material from the past five years in the process of making the record, and had a "thematic idea" about making an album with a fire concept during that time. He imagined an "eternal flame sitting on a hill", and upon hearing David Lynch talking at a party he was attending, asked him to record the same words for his album, at which point he said the idea for the album became fixed.
The track "Post Requisite" was featured on the soundtrack of Ellison's 2017 feature film ''
Kuso
''Kuso'' is a term used in East Asia for the internet culture that generally includes all types of camp and parody. In Japanese, is a word
that is commonly translated to English as curse words such as fuck, shit, damn, and bullshit, and is ...
'' and was accompanied by a music video. Prior to the album's release, the tracks "Fire Is Coming", "Spontaneous", "Takashi", "More" and "Black Balloons Reprise" were released as singles. The latter is a
reprise
In music, a reprise ( , ; from the verb 'to resume') is the repetition or reiteration of the opening material later in a composition as occurs in the recapitulation of sonata form, though—originally in the 18th century—was simply any repe ...
of the song of the same name from
Denzel Curry's 2018 album ''
Ta13oo
''Ta13oo'' (stylized ''TA13OO'' and pronounced ''Taboo'') is the third studio album by American rapper Denzel Curry. It was released on July 27, 2018, through PH Recordings and distributed by Loma Vista Recordings. The album serves as the follow ...
''. The opening track "Heroes" is a new version of the previously released song "Heroes Pt. 5".
Critical reception
At
Metacritic
Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...
, which assigns a
normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, ''Flamagra'' received an
average
In ordinary language, an average is a single number taken as representative of a list of numbers, usually the sum of the numbers divided by how many numbers are in the list (the arithmetic mean). For example, the average of the numbers 2, 3, 4, 7 ...
score of 80, based on 27 reviews.
Year-end rankings
Commercial performance
As of July 2019, the album has moved 10,000 units in United States.
Track listing
Credits adapted from liner notes.
Sample credits
* "Post Requisite" contains a sample of "Everything You Do Is a Balloon" by
Boards of Canada.
* "Heroes in a Half Shell" contains audio samples of the ''
Dragon Ball'' series.
* "Black Balloons Reprise" contains a sample of "Ten Et Tiwa" by
Alain Goraguer.
Personnel
Credits adapted from liner notes.
Musicians
*
Miguel Atwood-Ferguson
Miguel Atwood-Ferguson is a Los Angeles-based multi-instrumentalist, session musician, arranger, composer, music director, producer, DJ, orchestral conductor and educator. He has contributed to over 500 recordings and scored for television and fi ...
– strings
* Ashley Norelle – backing vocals
* Taylor Graves – keyboards
*
Ronald Bruner – drums , backing vocals
*
Deantoni Parks
Deantoni Parks (born November 2, 1977) is an American new wave/avant-garde/experimental musician. He is the co-founder, co-producer and drummer of the New York band KUDU along with artist Sylvia Black, and one half of the writing duo We Are Dar ...
– drums
* Niki Randa – backing vocals
*
Thundercat – bass
Technical
*
Flying Lotus
Steven Ellison (born October 7, 1983), known by his stage name Flying Lotus or sometimes FlyLo, is an American record producer, DJ, filmmaker and rapper from Los Angeles. He is also the founder of the record label Brainfeeder.
Flying Lotus ha ...
– mixing
*
Daddy Kev
Kevin Marques Moo (born 1974), better known by his stage name Daddy Kev, is an American DJ, Grammy Award-winning audio engineer, record producer and executive from Los Angeles, California. He is the owner of Alpha Pup Records and the founder of Low ...
– mixing, mastering
Artwork
* Winston Hacking – artwork
* Echelon Color – retouching
* Stephen Serrato – layout
* Guccimaze – typeface design
* Joph (Jeong-woo Jo) – portrait
Charts
References
{{Authority control
2019 albums
Flying Lotus albums
Albums produced by Flying Lotus