Not too long ago, Flying Lotus was at home in L.A., coming off an extended sojourn in David Lynch’s surrealist world, when inspiration struck. “I mean, what do you do when you’re just off a binge of Twin Peaks?” he says. For some people, the answer might be to pop a gummy and cue up Mulholland Drive. But for the boundless visionary born Steven Ellison, it was time to hit the studio.
“I was like, ‘Let me just quickly make a beat,’ so I could fuck around with this Auto-Tune plug-in that I got,” he continues. “And it evolved in a beautiful way.”
An hour later, he had “Garmonbozia,” which he released as a one-off single earlier this year. In Lynch’s film and TV saga, garmonbozia is the name of a sinister substance that resembles creamed corn. For Flying Lotus, it’s an apt name for a woozy, R&B-inflected mood piece featuring lyrics about a “red room,” crooned by FlyLo himself in an unusual turn on lead vocals. “When those stream-of-consciousness moments happen, they’re the most special to me,” he says. “When you look back, and you’re like, ‘What the fuck just happened? I got a whole thing here.’”
It turns out that was just the beginning of the new tricks he has in store. “Garmonbozia” is one of five tracks on Spirit Box, a surprise EP that Flying Lotus is releasing today through Warp Records. It’s his first solo, non-soundtrack project since 2019’s Flamagra, and he’s feeling excited when he logs onto Zoom to talk about it. “I’m happy,” he says. “It’s been too long.”
The new EP kicks off on a joyful note with “Ajhussi,” a bubbly house track that’s not quite like anything Flying Lotus has done in a long career of swirling through heady currents of electronic music, jazz, funk, and hip-hop. Another new track, “Ingo Swann,” taps into the same upbeat, danceable energy. “I was inspired to do something that was a bit more physical,” he says. “And I wanted to have something for the ladies, some reliable vibe music.”
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He connects these tracks to the lo-fi house sounds that he’s heard on Washington, D.C.-area DJ Ryan Celsius’ popular YouTube streams, as well as artists like Overmono, Villager, Cesco, and Ross from Friends (who is signed to FlyLo’s Brainfeeder label). “Before, when I first got on, there wasn’t really that space for it,” he says. “But now there’s more space for the out-there house — house for stoners and people who are out past 4:00 a.m.”
If all of this sounds like an established trailblazer picking up a spark from some younger fire-starters, he’s good with that, as shown by the somewhat self-deprecating title he chose for “Ajhussi” — a Korean term denoting a middle-aged guy. “I’m Uncle FlyLo now,” Ellison, who recently turned 41, says with a laugh. “You know what I mean? I’m in my uncle phase, my uncle era.”
The third track on the EP, “Let Me Cook,” features vocals by the R&B innovator Dawn Richard and bass from FlyLo’s longtime compadre Thundercat. Though they’ve never met, he’s heard Richard’s music and felt a kinship. So he reached out to her with an instrumental that he thought she might like, and she sent back a nearly-complete version of the song. “I was blown away by the choices. She’s really, really talented.”
“The Lost Girls,” a collaboration with Indian singer Sid Sriram, rounds out the EP. The last song recorded for Spirit Box, it emerged from a multiple-day in-person session at Flying Lotus’ home studio. “It really captures what I was trying to say with the whole thing,” he says. “It’s a soulful thing for the ladies, a little bit up-tempo, just enough movement. A very primal feeling.”
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Spirit Box represents just a fraction of the music that Flying Lotus has been working on since his last release, some of which sounds very different from this EP. “I make stuff all the time, and I feel like I’m just now in a place where I can focus on catching up with myself,” he says. “The newest stuff that I’m doing is super bugged-out and loud and really fast. And there’s a time for that, but I really want to say this right now, too. To me, these are sure-shot vibe tracks. And I want to get those things across, and then maybe I’ll hit them with something really crazy later.”
Projects in his vault include an unreleased full-length album that’s been nearly complete for “about two years,” featuring a collaboration with the late Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto, who died in March 2023. “I’ll still put it out someday, when it’s the right time,” he says. “I was working on this album, and I was getting really close to finishing it, and then [Sakamoto] passed away while I was mixing that song. And it just felt like it became more of a burden to finish after that. But I’m hopeful that I’ll get back to finishing it soon enough.”
There’s also another project in limbo that he can only hint at: “I was part of a Marvel movie for a while, and things didn’t necessarily pan out,” he says. “I don’t think they’re going to figure it out anytime soon, either.” (While he won’t say anything more specific, it’s easy to wonder if he might be talking about Marvel’s long-delayed, recently shelved Blade reboot starring Mahershala Ali.)
One long-brewing project that has come to fruition is Ash, the feature-length science-fiction thriller that he directed starring Aaron Paul and Eiza González. The film, which wrapped this spring, is due out next year. “I spent three years working on it,” he says. “It’s been the most difficult thing ever for me creatively. I need a challenge in my life at this point.”
Working on a film set is completely different from making a track at his home studio, he adds. “Everything is happening at once, and the smoke is going, and the actors are doing the thing, and everyone’s looking good, and the lights are up, and then things flash, and the boom goes…. When you see all these ideas and this grand collaboration come to life, it’s the most rewarding feeling ever.”
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That said, he wants to make it clear that anyone who thinks he’s chosen movies over music is wrong. “It doesn’t work like that,” he says. “Music is my church, and I got to check in often.”
With that in mind, he’s resolved to put out more new sounds soon. “A big problem that I have about this stuff is the thinking part of it,” he says. “I want to do less of that. So I’ve been telling my management and Warp, like, ‘Yo, less thinking, more music right now’ — because it has been too long. When you look at my computer, it looks like I’ve been very, very busy, and I want to get that stuff out there. No more long breaks anymore.”
