Flying Lotus - Until The Quiet Comes (2LP)

Until the Quiet Comes catches Flying Lotus at a rare moment of stillness, or at least his version of it. Released in October 2012 on Warp Records, it arrived after the collision course of Cosmogramma and felt like a lucid dream, a record that exhales rather than detonates. Steven Ellison, the producer behind the name and a key figure in Los Angeles’s beat scene, talked around this time about wanting a gentler, more nocturnal record. You can hear that intention in the spaces between the drums, the rounded synths, the way melodies flicker like distant streetlights.

The opener sets the tone with a soft, tidal pull, then “See Thru to U” brings in Erykah Badu, her voice slipping through polyrhythmic percussion and glassy chords. It is not a traditional feature, more like a séance where FlyLo invites a familiar spirit to hum along with the machines. “Putty Boy Strut” follows with a toy box beat that clacks and chirps in satisfying patterns. Cyriak’s stop motion video for it, all marching robots and swarming gadgets, nails the feeling of playful precision. On “Tiny Tortures,” the drums flit and stutter, bass blooming under a melody that keeps drifting just out of grasp. The song got a surreal video starring Elijah Wood that matched its hallucinatory pull, a reminder that Ellison thinks in filmic scenes as much as in hooks.

The guest list reads like a roll call of curious minds, but the album never plays like a compilation. Thom Yorke arrives on “Electric Candyman,” whispery and vaporous, and somehow it still feels like an Ellison confession. Laura Darlington floats through “Phantasm” with lullaby calm. Thundercat, Ellison’s closest co-conspirator, stitches bass all over the place and steps to the mic for “DMT Song,” a moment of sweet, uncanny clarity. The tunes are shorter, more vignette than odyssey, yet the arc holds. Compared to the maximal layers of Cosmogramma, this one moves like water around stones. The beats hit, but they recede before you can grip them, which makes you lean in harder.

The album’s visual world amplified its spell. Kahlil Joseph’s short film, scored with highlights from the record, turned the music into a dream narrative and won a Short Film Special Jury Award at Sundance in 2013. That matters because it framed the album as something lived and haunted, rooted in Los Angeles streets, not just a producer’s private cosmos. Critics tuned in too. Pitchfork stamped it Best New Music, praising the cohesion and the way it made quiet feel expansive. It is the kind of praise that often fades once the hype cycle resets, except this one has grown in stature. You hear its fingerprints in later Brainfeeder releases and in the softer, more tactile side of electronic soul that followed.

All the talk of quiet undersells how tactile the record is. The kick on “Sultan’s Request” thumps like a trunk in the parking lot outside the club, and “The Nightcaller” flips into a late night boogie that nods to G-funk without imitation. “Until the Colours Come” is a minute and change of shimmering keys, then “Heave(n)” folds that glow into a patient lilt. Ellison, great-nephew of Alice Coltrane, has always chased transcendence with drum machines, and here he lets harmony do some of the heavy lifting. It is psychedelic music that prefers a warm bath to a fireworks show.

If you collect Flying Lotus vinyl, this is one you feel as much as you hear. The low end hums in the stomach, rides and shakers carve little paths through the room, and the vocals sit like ghosts at your shoulder. Until the Quiet Comes vinyl rewards volume, not because it’s brash, but because the details bloom when the air moves. It has become a reliable staff pick in shops for a reason. People who come in looking to buy Flying Lotus records online often want the densest thing first, then they come back for the record that keeps them up at 2 a.m. If you are crate digging in a Melbourne record store or browsing vinyl records Australia from your couch, this is that 2 a.m. choice, the one that turns the room into a soft projector.

Ten years on, it still feels like a secret shared in a whisper. The songs run short, the ideas stretch long, and the whole thing plays like a guided drift through sleep stages. Flying Lotus albums on vinyl are built for deep listening, but this one shines when the house is quiet, the lights are low, and you are ready to let the music do the talking. It is a dream you can drop the needle on, and it keeps finding new colors every time.