Flying Lotus fans rejoice, today the famed electronic auteur announces BIG MAMA, a brand new EP coming out on 6th of March. It marks the long-overdue debut release from the producer – otherwise known as Steve Ellison – on his own Brainfeeder imprint: the Los Angeles based record label he founded almost two decades ago, which has gone on to release records from acclaimed artists like Thundercat, Hiatus Kaiyote, Kamasi Washington, and many more.
BIG MAMA captures Ellison in a moment of spontaneous, unbridled momentum. Densely packed with disparate sounds, rhythms, and effects, the EP delivers what he describes as “experimental, maximalist, hyperfast, electronic burst of energy”, packing seven dynamic tracks into a single continuous composition in which every bar is unique, containing no loops throughout.
“I wanted it to feel like being shot out of a cannon, just explosive, unpredictable energy,” he explains. “Like a fuckin’ computer gone awry. Like a machine that had just lost its mind.”
The BIG MAMA EP was created in the wake of a period of isolation spent directing and scoring his latest feature film, Ash, a process that saw him going back-to-basics in New Zealand with just his laptop and a controller. “It was like being in this hyperbolic time chamber, having to make a whole soundtrack alone. I felt like right after that I wanted to do anything but what I was just doing. So I started this project, and it felt like such a release to be able to have this place where I could just vent out some of my inner chaos”