Flying Lotus, ATP Nightmare Before Christmas

One man and a laptop is boring right? You can’t be cool just tapping at buttons on a Mac? Wrong. Despite just being one man and his laptop (plus additional DJ gadgetry), Flying Lotus is spellbinding – playing a set full of energy, tunes and effortless cool.

Nose-bleeding bass reverberates through the floor and track after track get the crowd jumping, hands in the air, as if they’ve forgotten they’re in Minehead and started to believe they’re actually at a warehouse in Manhattan. It is the party of the weekend.

The man whose mother calls him Steven Ellison (others call him a ‘futuristic hip hop maestro’) draws a huge crowd to the Centre Stage and everyone seems up for it. ‘Cosmogramma’ is one of the most forward thinking and invigorating albums of the last couple of years but live it’s a different animal, essentially a euphoric DJ set, mixing songs from his record together with other joints (is that the right term, yeah?) he’s remixed.

Throbbing and crunching this is a set full of hits and beats. The whole venue is electrified and the crowd are putty in his hands. Trippy and poppy in just the right amounts, tracks go from space age R’n’B to full on party mode. He does ‘Do The Astral Plane’, he drops Tyler The Creator’s ‘Yonkers’ with a down and dirty bass. He then does a request (‘Some kid Tweeted me and asked me to play my Radiohead remix. Don’t ever say I don’t take requests’). You may already know his ‘Idioteque’ remix – live it gets the crowd collectively going crazy.

As he ends he looks out into the audience and seems genuinely appreciative of the reaction he gets, so much so that he jumps into the crowd as the last . Tonight he has killed it. Butlins Minehead has never seen cool like this.