Photos by Timothy Saccenti

I meet Steven Ellison, aka Flying Lotus, in his Los Angeles home a few days after his appearance at July's Pitchfork Music Festival, and my only hope is that he's fully recovered. He gave everyone a lot to talk about that weekend. For one thing, he had recently announced his third LP, this week's Until the Quiet Comes, the follow-up to the instantly definitive Cosmogramma. And his performances at the festival and the Adult Swim afterparty were two of the most physically intense and, by his own admission, drunkest of the entire weekend.

Sometimes you need a reminder that even in light of the staggering complexity of his work, his emeritus status within Los Angeles' Brainfeeder and Low End Theory axis, and the monumental expectations associated with Until the Quiet Comes, the 28-year-old Ellison is still young, excitable, and prone to childlike fancy (he claims he has some beats ready for Wes Anderson if the call ever comes). It's even clearer once you enter his modest home, which doesn't initially appear to be all that different from others in the hilly and fairly quaint section of Mt. Washington. But imagine a typical suburban family house where the oldest son did all the interior decorating: The first things you notice are the outdoor pool, the bar, and the DVD tower, which doubles as the largest piece of furniture in the whole living room.

Still, the basement is clearly the place where most of Ellison's time is spent. It's a surprisingly casual setup for a pacesetting electronic producer-- there's a vintage arcade game, a basic drumset, a piano which doubles as a CD rack, and the largest iMac screen I've ever seen. He made a point of playing SpaceGhostPurrp's Mysterious Phonk the moment we started recording, which made me revise my original inclination that the faint remnant of marijuana smoke was from the previous day.

"If I have to be 'the experimental guy,' I'll roll with it.

I'm not the kind of person who's always out at

the club if I don't have to be. I like chilling."

Pitchfork: In terms of titles, Los Angeles and Cosmogramma were both statements in terms of geography or metaphysical places. What sort of experience does Until the Quiet Comes suggest for you?

Flying Lotus: More than ever, I had to analyze my mental state over the past couple of years because of all the things that happened since the last album came out. Just being surrounded by lots of noise-- good and bad-- and still being able to try to hold onto some kind of identity for myself. Artists are all giving so much of ourselves to the work and the people and the press and the media and Twitter and all that now. For me, being able to create from a genuine place is really difficult lately because there's so much going on all the time, but when all that stuff gets quiet, you can explore your ideas without any ego or mental chatter.

Pitchfork: How do you achieve that quiet state?

FL: I used to be really into traditional meditation, but I found that creating new music is the best meditation. When I'm able to get into that space, nothing else matters, and I'm just a vessel for whatever the message is; I feel like I'm not in control. It's like this organic communication, and I feel like that is the quiet, in a way.

Pitchfork: On the whole, h____ow would you want someone to interpret this music?

FL: I try to convey this feeling of being innocent in a mystical state, being in a place that's new, seeing things with brand new eyes, for better or worse. I just imagine this little kid floating on a beautiful king-size bed over the city at night, seeing all sorts of crazy stuff happening in the world. To me, half the fun is all the stories other people have. For some, Cosmogramma is a soundtrack to the first Tron movie: "We just turned the fucking sound off and turned on Cosmogramma to play it at the same time..."

Pitchfork: When you talk about new experiences with Until the Quiet Comes, was there a temptation to get out of L.A. in order to capture that? Or did it help you you to see the city in a different way?

FL: The city is always influential in the work, though I've had that [temptation to leave], but only recently. It's difficult because whenever I start working someplace else, I'm like, "Man, this would have been better if I had my subwoofer."

Pitchfork: Is there anything in L.A. you can't work without?

FL: Good L.A. weed. That's the thing you miss the most.

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Pitchfork: Which rappers have you thinking, "I hope this guy calls me and asks me for a beat"?

FL: I'd really like to do a track with Drake or Weezy. That'd be awesome. I'd really like to work with Tyler [the Creator]. We're both L.A. people and I felt like that was gonna happen before everything got really crazy, but who knows. It's either the connections aren't being made or I'm not on their radar, but I also feel like there's this weird thing where people think I just do this deep, dark thing. I don't know what it is, but they ain't fucking kicking my door down.

Pitchfork: Your live sets these days tend to go heavy on bangers-- I heard TNGHT, Watch the Throne, Schoolboy Q and Tyler at your most recent show. Is there ever a temptation to make your albums more hyped-up like that?

FL: Yeah, I get that temptation all the time, but at the same time, I feel like there's people who do that-- and I'm gonna let them do their thing. I make a whole bunch of shit like that-- crazy-ass dirty South beats and dubstep basslines-- I do all that shit, but for fun, or when I'm trying to think about producing for so-and-so. Like, I always wanted to do a track with Busta Rhymes, so I spent some time making Busta Rhymes-esque beats.

Pitchfork: Where do those crazier beats end up?

FL: On my hard drive. I sneak some of it into the show, too.

Pitchfork: What's the clearest example of something on the new record that you tried out live and thought, "OK, this has just gotta go on the record"?

FL: "Sultan's Request". That and "Putty Boy Strut" have been done for maybe a year and a half, or even longer. Those were staples in my show and they're finally coming out. I get some of that stuff out there, but not a lot of it. It's very much part of what I do but it's different-- it sounds like me but it's a little more accessible.

Pitchfork: Do you think about dropping those beats on EPs in between albums?

FL: I actually thought of releasing the Dirty South thing in a couple of weeks on a .zip.

Pitchfork: What's the hesitation?

FL: I feel like letting the album do its thing. I'll see. There's also an ambient album that I wanted to put out like that-- just throw some .zips out and, if they like 'em, they like 'em.

Pitchfork: How has your relationship with Cosmogramma changed since it first came out?

FL: I still feel really proud of what I did. It was a very interesting time in my life and I had to do something, and I'm glad I had music to get me out of it. Would I do things differently now? Probably. If I had to redo it again, if I had to George Lucas my shit, it would definitely be different. But I'm happy with it. On the new one, I was able to do all those things I wanted to do on the last one in a different way. I felt I needed to pull back some and not be so intense and let the moments build and breathe and have life.

Pitchfork: When you were making Until the Quiet Comes, were there certain points where you thought to yourself, "I'm still improving."

FL: Yeah, definitely. There were some musical ideas I wasn't able to pull off before learning new progressions, learning how to play better piano, write melodies better, and actually having experience of working with musicians, too. I definitely learned to communicate with other musicians better. I used to feel so intimidated by guys who can read notes, like, "Oh my god, they're gonna think I'm not even gonna be able to sit at the table." But I've come to see that a lot of these musicians don't know how to read music either, and that made me feel good. I could just come up with ideas or show somebody things and get the ideas across.

Pitchfork: When you collaborate with someone like Erykah Badu or Thundercat, what mindset does that put you in? What specifically about those two makes you want to step up your game?

FL: Thundercat, specifically, is insane. I'm always surprised at the things he comes up with when we're jamming out together. I gotta try to keep up with him and his ideas, be able to respond without speaking and come through with some more music. He challenges me to keep it musical and not so computer. He's like, "That's a good loop, now let's open it and go further." I got better with my sequencing from hanging out with him.

When it came to working with Erykah, more than anything it made me more confident, because she reminds me of my mom, and that dynamic is weird. But after a while it was like, "Fuck it. She needs my help. We gotta do this together, I can't just sit back." I really learned to own my ideas more. Communicating with musicians is really interesting because everyone has their quirks and their strengths and their weaknesses.

Pitchfork: When you put vocalists on your records, do they come with the lyrics in hand and fit it to the music?

FL: It all depends who it is and where they're at with ideas. With Laura [Darlington], I don't really have to tell her much, I tell her what the song means to me. I try to do that with everybody, and hopefully that inspires something. A guy like Thom [Yorke]-- let him do his thing. With Erykah, I helped out with some of the vocal arrangements. We did it all in the same room together, which was really cool. I'm thankful for that. It wasn't email. It was fun.

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Pitchfork: Since Cosmogramma, some of your labelmates on Warp, like Rustie and Hudson Mohawke, took the maximalism of that record to extremes. Does the new record feel like a reaction to where electronic music trends are going?

FL: Yeah, they're peers. We all came up together. Truth be told, we were all iChat buddies, all of us. We built this scene together. Admittedly, I feel the need to distance myself from a lot of that stuff because I feel like they're aiming more towards pop sensibilities, and it's not necessarily what I want to do with my music. If I have to be "the experimental guy" or whatever, then I'll roll with it. I'm not the kind of person who's always out at the club if I don't have to be. I like chilling. I think that comes across in my music.

Pitchfork: How do you attempt to turn your music into an emotional experience?

FL: That's a tough one because I never know where it's going when I start something. I'm not going to be like, "I gotta get this idea out of my head." It's like, "OK, here's a clean slate, and I've got all these paints, and all these brushes, and this is what I'm going to do with it." It reveals itself, and you take a step back and say, "What's happening here? Where are we going? What does this mean? Do I need to break it open? Does it need to just be what it is? Should it end now?"

You figure out what the feeling is, and if it's one of those good feelings, you don't want it to last too long, either. It's like an orgasm, man-- if it lasted forever, it wouldn't be awesome. Actually, an orgasm would be awesome if it lasted forever.