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Creators

4 Flying Lotus Animation Epics To Celebrate His Mind-Melting New LP Teaser

The two-minute trailer for "You're Dead!" is a visual cataclysm, continuing FlyLo's penchant for animation overloads.

Today, Flying Lotus released a video teaser for his upcoming fifth studio album, You're Dead!, out October 7th in the States via Warp. In typical FlyLo fashion, the two-minute clip (above) is a sensory-scrambling, audio-visual barrage that tantalizes us with snippets of his collaborations with Snoop Dogg and Herbie Hancock.

While the brief audio is intense in its own right, the rapid-fire animations alongside it had our pupils bouncing in time with Thundercat's warp-speed bass lines. For the new LP, cult manga artist Shintaro Kago—whose style is described as "fashionable paranoia"—created the album's visual theme to parallel the beat maker's latest sonic stockpile. FlyLo already premiered the album's tracklist through digital trading cards adorned with rather grotesque (albeit awesome) imagery, and the video teaser could be described as a cortex cataclysm that continues the producer's reputation for pairing his music with animated oddities.

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To emphasize our excitement for You're Dead!,The Creators Project wanted to look back at a few animations that have accompanied Flying Lotus's ever-epic music.

"Zodiac Sh*t" from Cosmogramma

For this booming classic off his 2010 album, Cosmogramma, FlyLo enlisted Adam 'Lilfuchs' Fuchs of Turner Studios to create a mind-melt of a video. Produced and released through Adult Swim, the vibrant clip doesn't fall far from the psychedelic trees of Superjail! or Adventure Time.

"Putty Boy Strut" from Until The Quiet Comes

To accompany the blipping "Putty Boy Strut," animator Cyriak devised a 2D world comprised of robot monsters that devour all the other mechanical beasts around them. The song itself feels totally devoid of human touch, as if it were made by machines for machines, so this short is a fitting (and frightening) complement. We imagine this would be what it would be like if BMO from Adventure Time drew his own Godzilla movie.

"MmmHmm" from Cosmogramma

Despite this Thundercat-featuring groove being as smooth as a fresh record sleeve (it's called "MmmHmm," after all), the track's video is an otherworldy glitch-fest, directed by Special Problems. FlyLo and his bass-slapping partner-in-crime rotate in circles on cosmic mountains before the video suddenly transitions into an 8-bit world with the musicians as pixilated avatars. Before we know it, the video morphs again, but this time into a glitch-heavy universe with some mystical fairies floating around. We can only imagine how many dorm rooms had this on repeat the week it was first released.

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"Kill Your Co-Workers" from Pattern+Grid World EP

As we wrote back in 2010, Flying Lotus doesn't actually wanted you to kill your co-workers, but the song's video does include a cubist massacre. The digital odyssey, directed by frequent Brainfeeder collaborator Beeple, includes a world populated by geometric people who explode into cubes and bleed out red squares after a robot rampage surges through a parade.

Beeple offered more than just a laugh, though, as he provided the clip's animation files (still available here) and encouraged the web to do whatever it wanted with 'em. The animator even said he didn't need crediting, so long as people "holla" at him with any cool projects they created. Now if only FlyLo did that with his infinite list of songs.

There are a multitude of other FlyLo visual collaborations that we couldn't get to, due to deadlines and general dizziness from the animated insanity. Tell us your favorite videos in the comments section, but don't even think we forgot about the legendary (and still haunting) "Dance Floor Dale."

For more on Flying Lotus and his upcoming album, head over to Warp Records.

Related:

Until The Awkward Silence Comes: A Casual Conversation With Flying Lotus

The Making Of Elijah Wood's Phantom Limb In Flying Lotus' New Video "Tiny Tortures"

Flying Lotus Doesn’t Really Want You to Kill Your Co-Workers