The old saw about sharks in the water — they keep swimming or die — bears at least a flicker of truth for the producer and composer known as Flying Lotus. The linchpin of an electronic-music vanguard in Los Angeles and a flagship artist for the progressive British indie label Warp, he has helped define a heady but soulful new strain of Afrofuturism, moving at a ceaseless pace.

Flying Lotus, a.k.a. Steven Ellison, 31, has long sought inspiration from myriad sources, including the searchingly cosmic music made by his great-aunt, the pianist and composer Alice Coltrane, who died in 2007.

“You’re Dead!” is his fifth album, a 40-minute fantasia of head-spinning digression but immersive unity. As on “Cosmogramma,” from 2010, and “Until the Quiet Comes,” from 2012, he blended his programming with live musicians, notably the bassist-vocalist Thundercat, a regular collaborator. Among his guests are the eminent jazz pianist Herbie Hancock and the ace young rapper Kendrick Lamar.

There’s an assertive forward push behind “You’re Dead!” that sets it apart from earlier Flying Lotus albums, while placing it in a continuum of psychedelic funk and early fusion. “I actually really fell in love with music again during the making of this record,” he said by phone from Los Angeles, on the eve of a club booking in Brazil. (His current tour will reach Terminal 5 in New York on Friday.)