Give an artist a brush and they’ll paint. Give a musician a concept and they’ll bring it to life. In an intangible way, both statements ring true for FLYING LOTUS who recently returned to Toronto’s Danforth Music Hall (October 21st) to shove the theatre into the open grave/world/playground that is his new full-length You’re Dead!. While his close pal THUNDERCAT opened the show with an understated yet surreal blast of bass-meets-free-jazz-meets-your-head (stream “Oh Sheit, It’s X!”), FlyLo jumped straight into his personalized layer cube, glitching through “Tesla”, “Turtles”, “Coronus, The Terminator”, and an expansive, audiophiles-only mix that felt like a Tiger Uppercut to the lungs.
He eventually drifted towards the crowd, spitting choice Captain Murphy tracks in a suit and tie (“Between Friends”, “Mighty Morphin Foreskin”) and though the response wasn’t exactly “hype”, it’s hard to blame the audience. FlyLo’s one-off ended with a duel against Stephen Bruner’s fretwork and if an onlooker wasn’t tripping balls, they were likely motionless with their jaw clinging to their shirt. Photographer Victoria Charko was present and her stills are below.