Herbie Hancock and Flying Lotus to collaborate?
A rumour is floating around on certain music websites that DJ/producer Flying Lotus is collaborating on an album with jazz legend Herbie Hancock. This article will be less about the specifics and more about speculation, specifically speculating on “How cool could that be?!”
For starters, Herbie Hancock is a jazz pianist who has been at the forefront of a number of jazz movements, specifically the shift from bop into the softer and more meditative styling of post-bop (a division of jazz from the 1960s onward). Performing on essential Miles Davis albums such as Seven Steps to Heaven and the impressionistic In A Silent Way, he released such indispensable jazz classics as Mwandishi, Maiden Voyage, and the seminal jazz-funk record, Headhunters. In short, Hancock is one of the most important musicians in the history of jazz and continues to push the boundaries to this day.
Steven Ellison, a.k.a. Flying Lotus (and sometimes the rap name Captain Murphy), is a DJ and producer at the forefront of the state of the art. With a striking polyrhythmic style and sonic sensibilities that range from 70s disco to contemporary avant-garde music, FlyLo’s LPs Cosmogramma and Until the Quiet Comes are gorgeous and dream-like experiences forging carefully crafted beats, overwhelmingly beautiful sonics, and striking vocal features from artists like Erykah Badu and Thom Yorke.
The potential for these two giants to collaborate evokes some interesting thoughts, specifically in the vein of the portrait of the artist as an innovator. True, hardcore electro-philes will tell you that FlyLo isn’t doing anything new in the same vein as Herbie Hancock had done for funk, jazz or hip-hop, but the notion remains that these two artists are not afraid to look forward and develop fresh, original ideas for music.
When music stays static, it gets boring, and Herbie and FlyLo are both acutely aware of this and make progression part of their artistic credo. When Herbie made Headhunters in 1973, it became both a mainstream success and an essential jazz classic, and completely changed the role of the keyboard/synthesizer in both jazz and funk music. FlyLo does the same thing in less monolithic ways – he is constantly working no matter what. Be it a mixtape, a feature production for someone, or making music for Adult Swim’s evening block of cartoons, the man is constantly making creative music that is a straight up pleasure to listen to. Whether or not it actually happens, it’s interesting to ponder how different and yet how similar these two monumental artists are, and how their respective attitudes to innovation, texture and genre-jumping could prove to make a spectacular funk/jazz/electro/psychedelic album.