For weeks, Steve Ellison, better known as Flying Lotus, lived inside a surge.
From his home studio in Studio City, Los Angeles, he would wake and move straight to work, staying there until evening in a state that felt closer to compulsion than routine, as sleep thinned and meals interrupted momentum. The music arrived in one sustained rush and, when it stopped, it stopped completely.
“It felt like one linear stream of consciousness,” he says “I’d wake up and write all day. I’d get annoyed if I had to eat. I’d get annoyed if I had to go to the bathroom. Then it just stopped. And I knew it was an EP.”
When Ellison speaks about Big Mama, his composure shifts, an audible lift entering his voice as the more considered tone of the conversation gives way to enthusiasm.
Big Mama, his first new music since 2024’s Spirit Box, carries that urgency. One piece stretches beyond thirteen minutes, and the EP feels restless and immediate, more concerned with momentum than symmetry. Ellison suggests it sits closer in essence to Pattern+Grid World (2010) than to the widescreen architecture of Flamagra (2019), favouring propulsion and extended sound design over orchestral density.
“I just wanted to create something that was fun and singular,” he says. “Just me and the computer. Not having a bunch of toys to work with – very limited stuff to play with. Just creating challenges for myself,” he muses.
Ellison describes himself as “a reactionary artist,” someone who responds to atmosphere and to his own conditions for creating, yet resists the idea that reaction must become commentary.
“I don’t want to remind people of the world we’re in. I want to help people escape it. I want to let people dream.”
That impulse has been visible throughout his career. Before Flying Lotus became widely associated with the Los Angeles beat resurgence of the late 2000s, Ellison was studying film and initially intended to direct.
“There was no expectation,” he recalls. “I thought I was going to focus on films. I was in film school.”
Music sharpened while he was working at Stones Throw Records, the independent Los Angeles label founded by Peanut Butter Wolf, whose roster included artists such as Madlib and the late J Dilla. In 2008, Ellison released Los Angeles, a record that positioned Flying Lotus beyond the periphery of a scene, and around the same time he founded Brainfeeder, drawing on what he had observed within independent label structures but reshaping it around his own approach.
Brainfeeder developed gradually. Over time, it has grown to become a home for artists whose work resists simple categorisation. Its stable includes longterm hip-hop collaborators like Thundercat and stretches to seminal jazz-infused artists like Kamasi Washington, and at its heart it remains a space where experimentation can expand without immediate commercial smoothing.
When Cosmogramma (2010) followed, Ellison’s audience widened considerably. He reflects that it could have marked a turning point.
“I could have gone more commercial,” he reflects. “But I decided to stick with the underground.”
Mentorship runs beneath much of Ellison’s philosophy, a concept he notes to be “highly underrated.” Early influences for him were familial and steeped in jazz lineage. “My aunt Alice [Coltrane] was a mentor,” he shares, and later guidance became peer driven. He names Madlib, Carlos Niño and filmmaker Quentin Dupieux among those who shaped his thinking, adding that even younger artists can provide ignition.
“Sometimes you just need to see what’s possible. You go to a museum and think, I could paint that. Then you go home and your stuff sucks for a bit. But you’re inspired.”
That exchange of visibility and possibility continues to inform the way Brainfeeder operates.
For someone frequently described as a cultural tastemaker, Ellison is shy of the term and resistant to scene affiliation all together. In fact he sidesteps the frame when asked about movements in Los Angeles or the UK.
“I’m not really part of any scenes anymore. I just check out what I like.”
And yet he speaks about Los Angeles with an inner knowing and anticipation, suggesting the city feels poised for change.
“I feel like LA is due for something new. Some kind of electronic scene that isn’t here yet.”
Ellison does not claim authorship of that future; and historically his approach has often been infrastructural rather than declarative. In 2013 for example he foresaw the future of gaming and embedded FlyLo FM inside Grand Theft Auto V, turning a video game into a functioning radio network that introduced experimental music to millions who were not actively seeking it.
When asked whether similar levers might accompany his upcoming releases, his response is restrained but considered.
“I’m trying to come up with new ways to do things. We’re at a new point now. Things are going to change.”
Film continues to run parallel, and his 2025 feature Ash reinforced that cinema and music inform one another rather than compete. With film, Ellison notes, time stretches differently, which may explain why the disciplines continue to coexist so naturally in his practice.
“You spend so much time waiting. You might as well make music at the same time.”
Outside the studio, Ellison plans to widen the perimeter this year. Japan again, but further beyond the familiar, Morocco, perhaps Marrakech, destinations far from Los Angeles that hint at the next shift in perspective.
“I want to go on some adventures,” he offers.
Listening to him, it becomes clear that as with Big Mama, Ellison builds in relation to the moment he inhabits, and then moves beyond it.
Big Mama is out on the 6th of March 2026 via Brainfeeder. You can find it here.
