With the dawn of each new day, Flying Lotus seemingly piles on yet another new project to his ginormous calendar, like some real-life version of Katamari Damacy.
The most recent outing sees FlyLo team with filmmaker Kahlil Joseph, who helmed the short film for last year’s Until the Quiet Comes, to direct and score a new short film about the African-American rodeo culture.
Wildcat explores the “little-known African-American rodeo subculture,” in Grayson, Oklahoma, further described as an “experiment inspired by the composition and performance of jazz music” and featuring “actual– cowboys; and envisioned– angels.”
In an interview with Nowness, Joseph further explained his interest in the rodeo and exploration of the larger African-American culture:
“Black people are light years more advanced than the ideas and images that circulate would have you believe. The spaces we control and exist are my ground zero for filming, at least so far, and there are opportunities for me to tap into the energy. So an all-black town with an all-black rodeo in the American heartland was a kind of vortex or portal through which I could actually show this.”
As far as his musical contributions are concerned, FlyLo’s score is centered around lots of evocative and ambient orchestral sections, with loads of fluttery strings and menacing piano. The darker undertones add a sense of heaviness to images of random cowboys, young people on ATVs, and calves being tackled to the floor.
Wildcat is the second film project FlyLo’s worked on recently, having also contributed music to the Jay-Z-produced An Over Simplification Of Her Beauty.
His other current projects include: A jazz project involving Herbie Hancock and Thundercat, among others; contributions to a new album by drum & bass legend Goldie; a new mixtape from his hip-hop alter ego Captain Murphy titled V; writing a new theme song for Adult Swim’s Aqua Teen Hunger Force; and, if there’s time, maybe he’ll take up snorkeling.
