Flying Lotus - Cosmogramma
Critic Score
Based on 35 reviews
2010 Ratings: #12 / 924
Year End Rank: #14
User Score
2010 Rank: #9All Time: #415
Liked by 545 people
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CRITIC REVIEWS

100
A.V. Club

Flying Lotus reaches into the past in order to create something clearly of the future – a hybridized work that challenges others to follow its dazzling blueprint.

92
Beats Per Minute
This album is a hazy, dreamy, well oiled machine; perfectly crafted and, I suspect, will be a gateway album to many more of its kind for more than a few people.
90
Slant Magazine

Steve Ellison may be all kinds of intellectual, but on Cosmogramma he never loses sight of the less reflective pleasures of his craft.

90
Billboard

Flying Lotus‘ third album, Cosmogramma, is a strangely cohesive amalgam of exotic sounds.

90
Resident Advisor

Cosmogramma moves without warning from mood to mood, genre to genre, all part of a holistic whole.

90
Spectrum Culture

Pink Floyd may have invented the space opera, but Cosmogramma, 2010’s first major contender for best electronica album, transcends it to another dimension.

90
Gigwise
Cosmic by name, cosmic by nature, ‘Cosmogramma’ packs an almighty load of that rarest of commodities in modern music: some genuinely new shit. Don’t let this joyfully bewildering shuttle pass you by.
90
PopMatters

Flying Lotus, much like Yorke, Greenwood & Co., has made a definitive summary of a decade’s worth of advances in electronic music, a release that transcends genre and deserves to become a glorified phenomena by those who experience it.

90
Tiny Mix Tapes

Cosmogramma is futurist in form, rather than content. Reliving the future's past through a constellation of references to cosmic jazz, psychedelic funk, hip-hop, and techno, the music of Flying Lotus never fixates long enough to crystallize; any groove that spontaneously emerges is quickly subverted, churned up in favor of a creating new maps and new vectors.

89
Paste

On Cosmogramma, this never-ending stream of aural textures sounds effortless, and the enthralling swirl of jazz, drum 'n' bass, dubstep and hip-hop beckons you toward the edge of something damn near cosmic.

88
Pitchfork
The L.A. producer's head music, which pulls from jazz, hip-hop, videogame sounds, IDM, and more, is more dense and rewarding than ever.
85
Prefix

Even though the steady presence of featured performances helps beautify Cosmogramma, this is essentially Ellison's crowning achievement. The album is sequenced with a sense of purpose, evidential from the promo being presented as a long continuous track.

85
Coke Machine Glow

Cosmogramma bursts with inventiveness; I've found myself careening around my apartment to sounds I don't recognize as of this Earth. That Lotus takes these vibrant ideas and sets them to pulses that move asses is incredible. Apparently everyone else is bouncing along in agreement.

80
The Needle Drop

Flying Lotus' third album is by far his most diverse, loaded with elements of jazz, hip hop, and countless hybrids of electronic music. It's dense, boundless, engaging, and fun.

80
Uncut
Woozy, off-track beats blend with video game blips and organic strings, harp and sax, while a cameo from Thom Yorke is woven neatly into this lush, psychedelic fabric.
80
The Guardian
Add in a dabbling in the spirit of free jazz and one might expect this album to be a wilfully discordant aural trial. But it turns out to be quite the opposite. The parts may be disparate but they are made to submit to an abiding mood of vivacity and sunniness.
80
Clash
Dense and obtuse it may be but those who follow this most intense sonic explorer will be rewarded the greatest.
80
Q Magazine
Fans of experimetal electronica will be [happy], though Radiohead devotees should exercise caution.
80
The Skinny

An ambitious, challenging album from a sonic visionary, proving FlyLo is virtually peerless – perhaps only Brainfeeder labelmate Daedelus can touch him. Not for those who enjoy verse-chorus-verse or four-on-the-floor – but true aesthetes will devour Comsogramma with relish.

80
HipHopDX

The musical legends that guest star here wouldn’t trust Flying Lotus if he didn’t trust himself—and trust is what makes this album work. Cosmogramma stays unpredictable without going too far off course, and uses unconventional sounds to deliver digestible results.

80
Under the Radar

Cosmogramma is futuristic magnum opus that will indubitably be heralded as one of th emost intrepid albums of 2010.

80
Consequence of Sound

You should stick around and see the vivid pictures Flying Lotus skillfully paints for you as you make your way through the mysterious maze that is Cosmogramma.

80
SPIN
Warm and inviting, his latest opus occasions swan dives into future soul, funky dubstep ("Dance of the Pseudo Nymph"), Theo Parrish–styled house ("Do the Astral Plane"), and astonishingly, Sun Ra jazz ("Arkestry").
80
NME
Picking us up where the laptop prof's 'Los Angeles' debut dropped us for another nocturnal journey through LA that serves as a moody, widescreen, be-bopping riposte to UK dubstep. Only this time it's a flashier ride.
80
AllMusic

Cosmogramma is an instrumental genre-jumping journey for head-bopping intellectuals, and the meditative melodies by vocalists Thundercat, Laura Darlington, and Thom Yorke only add to the experience.

80
musicOMH

Proclamations of his greatness may be slightly exaggerated, but Cosmogramma certainly adds to a deservedly growing reputation.

80
Drowned in Sound

Cosmogramma is dense and devotional, Ellison piloting his craft into the fading slipstream of his aunt Alice Coltrane’s cosmic strain of jazz.

70
FACT Magazine
Whether or not it’s deserving of the hype it has so far accrued is neither here nor there, but I can’t help but feel that should the promo push for it have been more subdued in its approach, it may have benefited the album, and Lotus, in the long run.
60
Rolling Stone
There's some info overload, but Ellison is an ace with pacing, and a distracted soulfulness guides the frantic laptop science.
60
God Is in the TV
Slipping through dubstep, garage, techno and hip-hop, Ellison's study of electronica created with the benefit of live instrumentation presents occasional orgiastic treats, but is mostly nothing more than an anti-mellifluous exercise in listener-satisfaction which, in the long term, is likely to render 'Cosmogramma' more an anachronism than cosmogram.
ThrowBackG
70

My sister: Woah. That's what my mind sounds like.

Me: I wish I could have his mind for 30 seconds just to see how he thinks.

My sister: This doesn't just sound like something he wanted to make. It's an idea he's been thinking about for awhile.

RakkSmells
100

Update:
Every time I listen to this, I feel like I find a new detail I love about the album. Every minuscule detail of this album just feels perfectly arranged to me. I feel like something this magical and detailed is impossible to replicate and I never fail to be blown away each time I hear this. It's definitely my favourite electronic album, but it might as well be in the running for one of my favourite albums of all time.

Probably one of my favourite electronic albums... period. There are ... read more

Fertvlol
70

It’s an amazing album experience that I wished it’d have been a lot better. I’ve seen this album a lot during my time on this site and also because of many YT videos recommending it, and it really peaked my curiosity to hear this so when searching further for this album I was very amassed by my the concept of being a map of the universe, which the music really fitted with the whole theme of listening to a bunch of collection of songs that made you feel like you’re going ... read more

spicyy
95

you ever listen to an album only because the cover looks sick af
fr though i loved this album, really crazy and fun. plus again that cover is so damn cool, one of my favorites

JulianGevarra
70

Flying Lotus has a unique sound but, for a mysterious reason, I was expecting something completely different. I feel this work is very impersonal like it hasn't aged as it was supposed to.

Tpz_aoty
70

showing a taste of idm that gives off a good start to the 2010s

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