Flying Lotus, the Grammys and the genitalia of Equus africanus asinus

Twitter spats are not the de rigueur footwear accessory for the microblogging generation, but are what happens when tweeters lose it with each other.

Whether it's David Cameron and the Smiths or Mark Thomas wanting to kick the fluff out of a allegedly corrupt alleged journalist, fights on Twitter are extra entertaining because its not just the school playground gawping in on the action: the whole world is watching and there is no teacher to break it up.

I missed this one completely, though. The Grammys announced their usual brown wash of inanity earlier this month. Their nominations are usually as cutting edge as Westlife using a cardigan to slice into Peter Andre's brain. Flying Lotus (pictured), though, wasn't going to take his lack of nomination lying down, and here's what he tweeted on December 2nd:

- "BT, Chemical Brothers, Groove Armada??? are you serious??Grammys are a joke. FUCK YOU." (Original tweet here.)

And then, just in case his message wasn't heard, he followed it up with:

- "FUCK YOU" (Link.)

- "You are jokes" (Link.)

And then he got his sass on because, y'know, this is Flying Lotus and he's one hard-ass muddyfunster.

- "PussyAssNotknowingShitaboutREALmusicBitchMadeMotherfuckers" (link) which sounds like a Prince album.

- "you better hope I don't get a ticket to the party bitch" (Link.)

- "suck a donkey dick" (Link.) Two words: Shrek porn.

Remember. This is one of the world's most highly respected producers with a penchant for J Dilla beat devastation and the occasional freejazz cigarette.

- "I know the people got me. The real heads got me. They won't catch me in a dress or a fucking afro. Fuck you pop ass pussies" (Link.)

Which probably resulted in a humble letter of apology to Gaslamp Killer, the turntablist who releases beats on Flying Lotus' Brainfeeder record label and has been known to sport impressive hair explosions from time to time.

I wouldn't dream of attacking anyone on Twitter, so I dribbled in jealous glee at FlyLo's boldness. And he is right. The Grammys are awful... and I wouldn't want to catch him in a dress either. Unless it's a Wednesday night when it's knob-tweakers' tranny night at my place.

Good job Mr Lotus made it up to the Grammys the following day, with this heartfelt apology and the cherry on top of this Twitspat pie:

- "I was drunk last night. My bad. You still suck though. BIGBANGATTACK!!!!!!!!!!!!!" (Link.)

As for the actual Grammy awards, here's a picture of Tom Baker holding a puppy. Forgotten about the Grammys yet? Good. I'm working on a cover version of a St Winifred's School Choir classic and rewording the chorus "Grammy, we hate you".

Flying Lotus' Cosmogramma embraces the cobblers

Do you remember all that cobblers in the '90s about the Aphex Twin's lucid dreaming?

If Flying Lotus hasn't spent the last two years in one massive lucid dream, I'll eat my trilby. His third album Cosmogramma sounds like every hazy memory and lazy Sunday spilled from his brain into shimmering, liquid gold.

Los Angeles, his influential 2008 album, was all about the head nods and the knob tweaking. It deep froze hip hop into crystalline instrumentals. The new album is not that. In fact, it blows his J Dilla manifesto out of the water as he looks further afield to jazz, to soul, to the weight of a musical history few artists manage to encompass in one record.

Cosmogramma seems ungrounded to the casual listener, spinning as it does from p-funk house (Do The Astral Plane) to shuffling workshop techno (Recoiled). It often jumps genres within one tune, but unlike that track-hopping scratchamentalist Prefuse 73 he plumbs emotional depths whilst snatching from different record boxes with breathtaking drive.

Confused

It's a difficult LP to hook into at first. The space jazz of Pickled confused me, and left me wondering if I was playing my mp3 at 45rpm instead of 33, while other tracks are pure lounge: Satelllliiiiiiiteee underwhelms, while Zodiac Shit is a laid-back summer afternoon.

But one you get used to the newness - free jazz and plenty and plenty of harps - the wooziness begins to lighten your head. Ravi Coltrane's tenor saxophone lends a smokiness to German Haircut and...And The World Laughs With You smothers Thom Yorke's vocals until they're musical chloroform. It's a dizzying ride.

Arkestry is the most leftfield, with mad drumming leading into moody choralwork, a dramatic edge that is only amplified by the descending melody and clockwork rhythm of MmmHmm. I can even forgive him the opening ping-pongs of a track called Table Tennis (what else?) despite dredging up the memory Enrique Iglesias' awful 'Ping Pong song'.

Spell

The deeper we fall into the spell of Cosmogramma, the more Flying Lotus' place in musical history becomes transparent.

Until now, FlyLo's great aunt, the jazz pianist Alice Coltrane came from another musical world: a different time with different ears. Until now.

The genre-busting Cosmogramma, encompassing nuyorican soul as much as hip hop, ties his history in with hers. It's that echo of the past that makes this a real producers' album, but in a very different way from 2008's Los Angeles.

Cosmogramma is a soulful kaleidoscope of genres, lending it a headiness not seen in his previous work - but its roots are deeep. FlyLo has drawn a line in the sand once again: it's time for his contemporaries to get dreaming.

Not very good: a slight blog blip

Please be patient, my sweet readers, while I migrate this blog to something other than Blogger.

I have been with Blogger since 2004, but their new rules on FTP publishing (I have no idea what any of it means) doesn't seem to be supported by my domain name people, Freeparking. So I'm having to jump ship.

Which means instead of writing, I'm having to wrestle with technical stuff that I'm not very good at.

Please be patient, make yourself a cup of hot chocolate, and wait by my blog for further instructions.

In the meantime, you could listen to a preview of Superfast Jellyfish by Gorillaz, sift through an excellent new writing site called Profwriting, look at these utterly uncharismatic photos of Four Tet DJing in Chicago, or grap this Martyn podcast featuring the likes of Joy Orbison, J Dilla, Drexciya and, er, Prince.

Album reviews: Shlohmo's clunky knobs, Ambient News's sepia hue and Mark E spluttering all over your face

Right then, enough about Autechre's leakiness for now. Time for some slap-dash album reviews.

Ambient News

The recent self-titled album from Ambient News doesn't push the envelope so much as snuggle inside it to avoid disturbing the postman.

The busy little beat smothered in vocoders on Moon On My Forehead is as energetic as this album gets. It will appeal to those who like looking at their ambient music with sepia-hued retinas: think Tangerine Dream, 1990's Plaid in simmering mode, or particularly the Feed Your Head compilations.

Hiding behind the Ambient News moniker is Cylob, the man who brought us a superb subversion of rave culture in Rewind. This alternative guise gives him the chance to mess around with harmoniums and gamelan-style 'earth' ambience.

Ambient News sounds incomplete. If it was BBC Ambient News 24, at the top of every hour, it would have about 15 minutes of newsreaders filing their nails. It's almost as if Cylob had been gathering ideas together for a long time, but never quite realised his vision...

Mark E

...unlike Mark E. This hypnotic house music peddler has also been hoarding tracks, but his resulting Works 2005 - 2009 compilation is a much grander affair than Ambient News. I wouldn't normally delve into disco house on this website, but this album splutters quality all over your face, licks it off with a big lizard tongue, then spits all the quality back in your face again.

You see, for someone who's made his diminuitive name giving us his take on Janet Jackson and Diana Ross (now there's a duet I'd like to see), a lot of these tracks are a bit too slow, a bit too subtle and dangerously hypnotic. And that's a good thing.

As for individual cuts, I'm not mad on the funkiness of Sun Shadow, even though Mr Scruff has been pummeling away at that track like a Daily Mail reader who's just discovered a hammer for the first time. But Mark E's reworks of Slave 1 and Plastic People are house music at its most sexy and sublime.

Shlohmo

Finally, us IDM fans have been dropped a cracking album from Los Angeles beat scientist Shlohmo (pictured above, not to be confused with the beatboxer with a similar name).

Shlomoshun Deluxe is an album of brittle lo-fi beats in the Hudson Mohawke / J Dilla vein. And when I say lo-fi, I'm not kidding. He plugged a mic into his laptop, along with his dad's ancient Jupiter 6 (an old Roland synth with clunky knobs) and, somehow, expected to produce a good album.
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He did: it's my favourite album this week. The emphasis is all on the groove, and it has a David Holmes wideness to it - which is a remarkable achievement considering he made the whole thing from sellotape, string, splittle and sausages. Well, maybe not the sausages.

Mixin' ma tunesies: Flying Lotus, Rustie and The Black Dog

I've had a strange mixture of two songs stabbing my eardrums all day. The first is Getting Away With It, the melancholic Pet Shop Boys-sprinkled pop song from Electronic. The second is My Humps, the paean to road calming measures by the Black Eyed Peas.

The result is an insistent and disturbing image of Johnny Marr rubbing me all over with his strangely misshapen mammaries. Like being tickled with rubber bags full of gerbils, only in a bad way.

All of which is distracting me from some important record releases about which you, my newly disturbed reader, should know. Each of these feature remixes and are 47% more successful than anything offered by an Electronic / Peas combo.

Last year, Flying Lotus was basking in the glory of his album Los Angeles when he offered us a 12" of strange remixes. If you're quick, you can still pick up copies of Shhhh! It includes, among others, a dirty snare-smacking version of Mr Oizo's Stunts ($tunt$ is the most immediate track here), a drastic scratch mix of J Dilla's Lightwork and a seriously widescreen bass-wobbling Promiscuous Girl by queenzilla of the perfect pout Nelly Furtado.

Rustie's Bad Science EP (Rustie pictured above) is further evidence this young whipperbleeper should be a lot more famous than he is. Bad Science offers up bubbly 8-bit hip hop mentalism, including a reconfiguration of one of the best tracks of 2008, Zig Zag, while still being breathy and prowling like a robot stalker. The whole thing pretty much sounds like Zig Zag, so if you've got that, get this.

And finally, there's an EP from The Black Dog called We Are Sheffield which pours remixes over your speakers until you'll be mopping up massive basslines, glitch techno and warm mellowness from your newly shampooed carpet. It's worth it alone (sadly alone, if I'm honest) for the epic yet moody Autechre remix.