Biography
Flying Lotus quickly became known for his genre-bending influence on the hip-hop scene. A lover of hip-hop, jazz, and electronica, he moved seamlessly from one sound to another throughout his impressive career. Born Steven Ellison in Los Angeles in 1983, Ellison's grandmother was songwriter Marilyn McLeod, and his great aunt and uncle were Alice Coltrane and John Coltrane. Ellison was studying filmmaking at the Los Angeles Film School when he realized that music was his calling, taking on the moniker Flying Lotus based on imagery that appeared to him in a lucid dream. After getting some of his beats accepted for use on the TV network Adult Swim in 2003, he released his debut album 1983 in 2006. By 2008, he had founded his own label, Brainfeeder, through which he released the album Los Angeles that same year. Ellison remained interested in film, however, even working with the Ann Arbor Film Festival in 2010 to live score an avant-garde 1950s animation "Heaven and Earth Magic." His musical journey continued with the heavily electronic Cosmogramma in 2011, followed by 2012's Until the Quiet Comes. That same year, he returned to film again, releasing the 34-minute short film "Duality" under the alias Captain Murphy. Two years later, Ellison returned to the studio again, this time for the record You're Dead!, a concept album about the moment of death featuring appearances by Snoop Dogg and Herbie Hancock. Ellison also became a regular face on comedian Hannibal Buress' TV series "Why? With Hannibal Buress" (Comedy Central 2015) as the show's house DJ. Flying Lotus next moved into film, writing and directing an experimental film, "Kuso" (2017), that quickly became notorious on the festival circuit for the number of audience members who walked out of screenings overwhelmed by the film's graphic sensory assault.
