CD reviews: You're Dead! by Flying Lotus; Hozier by Hozier; Wonder Where We Land by SBTRKT
Every new musical form begins with a period of great fertility and innovation. Inevitably, it settles, petrifying into a distinctive but limited set of rules to be played with ad infinitum. Jazz is no exception, but perhaps more than other genres it has become the property and the playground of a small, interested elite, abdicating any claim it once had to the popular consciousness.
You’re Dead!
Warp
Every new musical form begins with a period of great fertility and innovation. Inevitably, it settles, petrifying into a distinctive but limited set of rules to be played with ad infinitum. Jazz is no exception, but perhaps more than other genres it has become the property and the playground of a small, interested elite, abdicating any claim it once had to the popular consciousness.
Flying Lotus, aka Steven Ellison, has nothing new to say about jazz per se, but he is bringing it back into the conversation. From its opening moments, his new album You’re Dead!, roots itself in the experimental jazz tradition in a way few recent albums have. The result feels needed and fresh, if not perfect.
There are other traditions here too – hip hop primarily, of the Andre 3000 variety, and the rough guitar riffs of prog rock. You’re Dead! is an American melting pot, cooked up on the fires of contemporary electronic music.
Like jazz, the album offers more of a mood than a distinctive series of songs. Ostensibly this is about death, but the overwhelming atmosphere is one of creation, change and, ultimately, rebirth.
Hozier
Columbia
