Across a nearly 20-year career, Flying Lotus has built up quite the resume: six albums, dozens of film scores, high profile collaborations, and apparently, two iPhone ringtones that have been on devices since the 2019 launch of iOS 13.
The contributions were confirmed by the Apple podcast Twenty Thousand Hertz, which takes a deep dive into recognizable and ubiquitous sounds and breaks them down note by note. Their latest episode focuses on “The Sounds of Apple” and follows the origins of several ringtones. Two of them, “Daybreak” and “Chalet,” were credited to Steve Ellison — A.K.A. Flying Lotus.
Apple promoted the new podcast this week and tagged Flying Lotus in their social copy — FlyLo then retweeted the promo, confirming his once-secret work for the company. “Apple leaked it so I can say it,” Flying Lotus wrote on Twitter. “I wrote some ringtones that have been in ur iPhone since ios13. ‘Daybreak’ +‘Chalet.’” Listen to the two ringtones below.
Flying Lotus is not the first well-known musical artists to contribute to a tech company’s bank of sounds and haptics. Brian Eno notably composed the start-up sound for Microsoft’s Windows 95, and the late Ryuichi Sakamoto composed a series of ringtones for Nokia in 2007.
Meanwhile, Flying Lotus made his grand return this month with “Garmonbozia,” his first solo, standalone single in five years.
Apple leaked it so I can say it. I wrote some ringtones that have been in ur iPhone since ios13. ‘Daybreak’ +‘Chalet’ https://t.co/HHReqvxUgf
— FLYLO (@flyinglotus) August 21, 2024