With his fellow Brainfeeders Jeremiah Jae and Thundercat as openers, Flying Lotus took over Terminal 5 in New York and gave the audience a killer, mindf*ck set. The bit of Thundercat’s set that I caught showed how his abstract jazz meets rock meets hip-hop beats fusion works well with FlyLo (who had Thundercat perform on this album Cosmogramma. Taking his name from the cartoon show, the man is a character himself — Stephen Bruner wore chainmail sleeves on stage while playing his bass.
Aside from the trippy music, the one moment that totally amazed me was watching Storyboard P’s seamless dancing. The man was completely smooth and pliable, twisting and turning every which way. I almost believed it was a trick of the lights, but that’s not the case, somehow he defies gravity and other laws of physics, so he must be a ghost (there is audience video of him below but it isn’t the best quality).
Storyboard’s moment could have stolen the show, but Flying Lotus had already decided the show was never about him alone. Oftentimes Brainfeeders hopped on stage and danced or snuck between the curtains to join Fly Lo at his decks. Towards the end, they even led the audience in a chorus of “Happy Birthday” to celebrate Ellison’s 29th. But during his set, the maestro mixed in numerous tracks, particularly heavy at the low end, from the likes of the Beastie Boys (“Intergalactic”), Radiohead (“Idioteque”), Waka Flock (“Hard in the Paint”), Hudson Mohawke (“Furnace Loop”), and some others that included chanting, His eclectic musical tastes and inspirations made it so that no one could be certain when the next beat drop would occur. What was clear though was FlyLo delivered a brainy set that was impossible not to dance to. The big smile on his face was reflected back at him at least a thousand fold from the appreciative crowd.
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Thundercat:
Fly Lo: