I like to think that when Flying Lotus created this record, he sat himself in the middle of a dank, decaying room with a few pieces of studio equipment and started to paint; the room a blank canvas. Each note played, a brushstroke in the ever-increasing complexity of the aural and visual artwork created around him. Dull browns, greys and greens turn to rich, emotive colours, from the deepest crimson to robin’s egg blue, swelling and shrinking, breathing and always evolving. Alice’s Wonderland pales in comparison.

He starts by applying delicate arpeggios that trickle upwards, defying gravity, over the top of an elegantly cluttered landscape of workers labouring away. As the labourers tire, a single voice echoes into the soundscape, imprinting reflections of itself on the walls of the room. Flying Lotus, the man at the centre of all this, muffles his mind and lets his eyelids droop for a second as it all fades away.

THUD.

The hunched man’s boot hits the cedar floor as his eyelids instantaneously draw back under his brow, his eyes following suit, finding themselves staring at the unimaginably fast-ticking brain of this moment’s creator. A small cloud of metal shards jangle violently as they float over the man’s head, and he finds himself stomping relentlessly in a swaggering rhythm. With each stomp, the room shifts just a little bit; dust sprouting out from skirting boards in tiny explosions as the building is torn apart, until after a while it’s loosened enough to float freely with the help of some musical helium produced by the figure in the centre of the room.

After a long journey, the now-rejuvenated room, free of its shackles and imbued with life, makes its way into space. Within the organic spacecraft, fingers erratically but gently press down on piano keys, playing soulful chords among the jumbled, otherworldly noises of the solar system – a strange mix of human emotion and the confusing nature of the unknown.

There is beauty in the unknown, though it is often unsafe. The vessel is soon sucked into a vortex – some type of wormhole which sends impossibly deep frequencies shuddering throughout the whole primitive vessel. In no time at all, the impassioned space traveller’s eyes face forward again so that he may stare out a glowing window at millions of others just like him; many of different forms and species, but all with the same look in their eyes. They propel themselves toward him in synchronised, flowing movements and soon board his craft.

There is no fear, only embrace, as their leader lets a haunting melody slither out of her mouth while the others inspect the traveller’s body. They decide his heart is true, and silently invite him to join them. He wordlessly accepts, and together they create just the right harmony that will dissolve the spacecraft into the fabric of space.

This is not the end the journey which Flying Lotus has recorded, but I’ve run out of words, so I recommend slipping on some headphones, dimming the lights, and experiencing it firsthand. Hopefully FlyLo finds a way to deliver some new sounds before long so that nobody has to stop dreaming their lives away.