Even when he's speaking from the other end of a crackly long-distance phone line, Steve Ellison sounds a lot like he does on record. As Flying Lotus, the Californian producer makes records of woozy, largely instrumental hip-hop whose beguiling surfaces conceal a restless, fidgety energy. Nothing stays in a holding pattern for long: The rhythms are forever shifting, the melodies morphing into different shapes.

Talking to Ellison feels much the same. Though he never speaks faster than an amble, he'll swerve halfway through a sentence, disagree with himself or suddenly change the topic. At one point he stops me mid-question, apologizes and pops off to brush his teeth, complaining that "I can smell my breath right now." Later, we'll spend a good five minutes talking about sleep paralysis and lucid dreaming, which certainly beats talking about synthesizer presets.

It's been a good year for Ellison. A few months ago, his second album, "Los Angeles," was released on influential British label Warp Records to more-or-less universal acclaim from both critics and fellow producers, sending its creator on tours to Europe and now to Japan.