About

Midnight movies and anime have long played a crucial role in Flying Lotus’ aesthetic universe. Now, between the recently established film division of his Brainfeeder label, numerous scoring projects, and his foray into directing with the animated feature Kuso, the artist born Steven Ellison is increasingly making his mark on film as well as music. It’s a natural development for an artist who cites the influence of Shinya Tsukamoto’s grimy cyberpunk body-horror nightmare Tetsuo: The Iron Man as often as he does any given musician. The man did get his start composing Adult Swim bumpers, after all.

Taken into consideration alongside Ellison’s own growing body of animated work, Yasuke illuminates the kinship between Flying Lotus’ musical and visual instincts. Just as Thomas synthesizes sci-fi mecha and paperback fantasy with Japanese medieval history, Ellison’s universe is constructed out of jazz riffs, new-age synthesizer noodling, hip-hop drums, and the sounds of the many, many anime he’s ingested over the years, all coming together into one cohesive frame. In Yasuke’s self-consciously hybrid genre approach, Ellison finds himself well matched with a like-minded visual artist who dreams up new worlds and alternate timelines. Flying Lotus ultimately asks us to consider electronic music in similarly fantastical terms: Why limit yourself to one style or school of sound when an infinitude of timbres and textures is at your fingertips? - Pitchfork