Flying Lotus ANZ 2026

For over two decades, Los Angeles visionary Steve Ellison, better known as Flying Lotus (aka Captain Murphy), has reshaped the sound of contemporary music. Raised in a lineage of musical brilliance that includes Marilyn McLeod and Alice Coltrane, Ellison emerged from LA’s influential Low End Theory scene with a sound that fused jazz, hip-hop, electronics, and futuristic experimentation into something entirely his own.

Through landmark releases on Warp Records and collaborations with icons such as Erykah Badu and David Lynch, alongside production work on Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp A Butterfly, Flying Lotus has become one of the most important creative voices of the 21st century. As the founder of Brainfeeder, he has also championed a new generation of boundary-pushing artists including Thundercat, Kamasi Washington, George Clinton, and Hiatus Kaiyote.

A visual creative as much as a sonic one, FlyLo is renowned for immersive live shows combining intricate sound design with cinematic visuals, 3D animation, and avant-garde lighting. His creative output now stretches beyond music into film and television, directing and scoring projects such as Ash, contributing to V/H/S 99, composing for the Netflix anime Yasuke, and creating the theme for Apple’s They Call Me Magic.

Never confined by genre or medium, Flying Lotus continues to evolve, most recently with the vibrant Spirit Box EP, a house-leaning collaboration featuring Dawn Richard and Sid Sriram.

A longtime friend of The Operatives, Flying Lotus first performed for the crew in the late 2000s, making this return a full-circle moment with one of the most influential artists to pass through the Operatives orbit.

Expect the unexpected. A rare appearance from one of modern music’s true polymaths. 🚀