- Flying Lotus's spacey, synth-heavy score for the LeSean Thomas anime stands tall on its own.
- "I've been a fan of anime for forever, but I never thought the day would come where I'd be part of this world," Steven Ellison, AKA Flying Lotus, said in a recent interview. He was talking about Yasuke, the new Netflix anime from LeSean Thomas that reimagines the story of the legendary Black samurai of the same name. Ellison soundtracked, executive produced and helped with the story of Yasuke, and you get the feeling it might have become somewhat autobiographical for him—the main character Yasuke being a Black samurai in Japan mirroring Ellison's outsider status during his frequent travels in Japan. To prepare for the work on the anime, he watched hours of samurai films and ate only Japanese food. This immersion might have led him to making a cosplay-style approximation of Japanese culture, but with Yasuke, not only has Elisson crafted a soundtrack that's singular and spellbinding, he's made one that holds its own against any of his renowned studio albums.
According to Ellison, after listening to some early demos, the director told him that the atmosphere was great but he needed to remember the beats, too. The director's advice gave Ellison the license to flex and be himself. From the signature head-nodding rhythms and off-kilter swing on tracks like "Using What You Got" and "Crust," to the trappy zing of "RoBomb" and "Mindfight," Ellison seamlessly stitches traditional hip-hop elements into the soundtrack's more mystical touches.
Where the clavinet was the core of Ellison's last album, on Yasuke the Yamaha CS-60 takes center stage. The vintage synthesizer—famously used by Vangelis for the Blade Runner soundtrack—is responsible for the droning, sometimes decaying sounds Ellison uses to conjure the record's out-there ambiance. The music sounds both ancient and spacey, not evoking a single time period so much as a whole other world that exists outside our own time and place.
Even without having seen the show, you can feel the push and pull of adventure in the album's pacing. Meditative moments like "Shoreline Sus" are layered with uneasy sounds, while tracks like "Taiko Time // Sacrifice" and "The Eyes Of Vengeance" use brass blasts and a militant bravado to capture the thrall of conflict. Vibrant, organic-sounding drums dominate the battle sequences. "Kurosaka Strikes!" and "War At The Door" are both nimble, with a palpable tension beneath the rhythms. When the dramatic stakes are high on Yasuke, it's always convincing.
Some prominent guest appearances add to the soundtrack's appeal. "Black Gold," with Thundercat, feels like the moment their collaborations have been building up to all this time. The lyrics have the typical on-the-nose, sentimental vibe of a roughly translated anime theme song, but here they're dipped in molten funk. "African Samurai" is Denzel Curry fully unleashed—after a career of making at least one reference to Japanese culture on nearly every verse he's written, he comes correct here. Rapping "Blood-stained katanas / Black man from Ghana," every line is from Yasuke's point of view, a peak at the inner monologue of an otherwise stoic protagonist. Elsewhere, Nikki Randa (a frequent Flying Lotus collaborator who appeared on what is, in my humble opinion, his best song) glides over strings on the mesmerising "Hiding In The Shadows."
Ellison described last year as both uninspiring and "the worst of times." The Yasuke project, then, seems like it was a much-needed exercise in world-building, an act of escapism, if you will. On his earlier albums, Ellison drew inspiration from the infinite mysteries surrounding our world, like the cosmos and death. Having someone else's story to tell gave him a new kind of focus, a chance to try new things. Yasuke is an anime set in feudal Japan that features fighting robots and battles on the astral plane. Its soundtrack is adventurous and creative enough to match.
Tracklist01. War At The Door
02. Black Gold
03. Your Lord
04. Shoreline Sus
05. Hiding In The Shadows
06. Crust
07. Fighting Without Honor
08. Pain And Blood
09. War Lords
10. Sachi
11. Your Screams
12. Using What You Got
13. African Samurai
14. Where's The Girl?
15. Kurosaka Strikes!
16. This Cursed Life
17. RoBomb
18. Taiko Time // Sacrifice
19. Your Day Off
20. Your Armour
21. Enchanted
22. Mind Flight
23. Survivors
24. Your Head // We Won
25. The Eyes Of Vengeance
26. Between Memories