Stuart Howard, a London based producer operating under the alias of Lapalux, is a member of Brainfeeder’s surrealist gang of artists, whose label head is Flying Lotus. There’s a certain viscosity to Lapalux’s music. His beats drip through your ears like chocolate fondue, smooth R&B samples coating your buds with a richness that’s disturbed by etches of snares and clinks of industrial bass. What you get is a sound that is retro and futuristic, hard and soft, pleasant and disruptive. Thanks to STD, who brought in Flying Lotus back in November, Arkham’s going to be one hell of an audio/visual hallucination on March 26. We caught up Stuart via Skype before he embarks on his Asia tour.
How did you first get into music?
I started playing guitar when I was a kid, and I never really wanted to stick to playing other people’s songs. I found myself trying to play the guitar in different ways. At the time that I grew up, computers were really expensive, and I would just use my mum’s computer to try and record. I would take a microphone and run around recording people talking and then chop it up to try to make a beat. I was way more interested in manipulating things so that they were more abstract and so far away from what they originally were.
When I was studying music at school, it was about making the best recording with perfect ratios in a completely silent room. I’ve always felt like polishing sounds that aren’t meant to sound good, or trying to get lo-fi sounds to sound pleasant or structured. Later in life, I went to university and studied music technology, which was more interactive technology and sound design stuff. I was still naive and young back in the day, and I didn’t know what I was doing.
How would you describe your sound?
It’s a bunch of things shoved together with various ideas of hip hop, experimentalism, and pop music. I don’t know really; I just say something different each time I’m asked this question. It’s like if you’ve never seen color before, how do you describe color to someone? All the stuff that I’ve been writing and what I’m writing right now for a potential new record, the direction is always different.
What can we expect from the new stuff you’ve been working on?
I’m really into hardware at the moment. I’ve been experimenting more, and I’m sick of the beats coming out nowadays. It's just the same artists doing the same things, and everyone is jumping on the whole chillwave scene.
I’ve become very analytical with music because I make my own. It’s like when a filmmaker watches a film, they’re gonna see things and pick up on things that most people don’t on first watch. I listen to the songs that I make over and over again, and try to perfect it until there aren’t any bits that make me angry. So it’s really difficult to listen to other people’s music and not be critical. If I feel like I can do what they’ve done, without sounding egotistical, I feel like it’s maybe a bit lazy. But if it works and I’m jamming to it, I don’t care about all that. But sometimes if a song has a preset that I know, it feels cheap to me. So I just try to look for the most abstract music as possible.
Since your songs have a curatorial nature, what’s your creative process like? I can't imagine it's like Taylor Swift writing lyrics to a melody…
Basically, I will literally just sit here in my room with a keyboard and find some chords that I like. And from there, I just bring up Ableton and try to record stuff. I don’t know if every song starts in its own way. I feel stuck if I’m in the studio for too long, so I like to go outside sometimes. But then there’s always that guilt when I’m out and I haven’t been making music.
Andreya Triana is featured twice on your last album Lustmore. How did this collaboration come about?
Andreya’s management got in contact and wanted a remix of one of her tracks, like ages and ages ago. And then I asked her to do something original, and since then we’ve just worked on some stuff together.
Are you pretty selective about who you collaborate with?
One time I sent a tweet for collabs, and my Gmail just got flooded. There were some good pieces, but it’s hard when you’re inundated with so much stuff. I like to reach out to people that I like and respect. Recently I’ve been taking more steps to get people to work with me. It’s nice to be in a position where it’s a little bit easier to work with people. There’s quite a few collaborations at the moment for this next album.
Does the music you make reflect the music you listen to?
Yes and no. I try to listen to a very minimal amount of music. Like I won’t sit here and listen to Kanye’s new album or anyone’s new album really. I’ll listen to individual songs and things that are inspiring, and I’ll listen to that over and over again until I get sick of it. So I guess that indirectly influences my sound. But other than that, I try to stay away from listening to too much stuff. Like my mates will send me tracks, and I’ll be like, "Oh that’s cool but that one synth is really fucking annoying me."
Like Sasha Fierce or Lady Gaga, is Lapalux your alter ego?
Yes and no. I don’t like mixing the two things. I don’t feel like I’m one or the other, I just feel like myself. Whenever anyone mentions it, it’s kind of like, 'Oh shit yeah that is kind of weird that it’s me at the same time.' It does feel like an alter ego, but I don’t really talk about “it” around my friends. There is a distance between the two things, but it just is what it is.
What do you expect for your first time in Shanghai?
Honestly, I have no idea. I’ve been to a lot of places and everywhere is different. I don’t even like to think about it, I just want to be surprised. I’m way looking forward to it though, more so than the past times I’ve been on tour.
You’ve said in the past that your music is a visual experience. Can we expect any visuals for your Arkham set?
All the shows, if everything goes to plan, will have live audio visuals. I have a separate computer that runs a program which picks up grooves and key points in the music with 3D layers with animation. Expect weird, trippy, crazy visuals.
What’s the ideal environment to enjoy a Lapalux track?
It depends on what track you’re listening to. I’m gonna try and play some new bits while I’m on tour, just to hear them really loud in a club and see how people react. I think they all have their own situations. The new stuff I’m working on may not be so chill, like it's a bit more dark and aggressive.
Any reason for going in a darker direction?
To be honest over the years, blogs have changed what they write about. There’s a lot of blogs now that I used to find new music on and get excited about, but all the blogs now are just trying to monetize. Like when Kanye released his new album, all my fucking Facebook feed was just that. Or when Future or Young Thug comes out with something, every single blog is talking about it. The underground seems to be getting pushed so underground that I don’t how anything could come to surface.
Maybe it’s just me, but I’ve been making music now with that in mind. I just don’t care as much, like I don’t care if blogs pick this up. I just don’t care about certain things anymore, like there was a death of my ego after Lustmore. Now I can just do what I want to do, and it feels great but kind of weird at the same time.
But I’m going to stop babbling before I get into too much trouble. Blogs have been really good to me, but I feel like the power has shifted, is shifting. People are trying to do things themselves and put money into their own videos, build their own fanbase, and not rely as much on blogs. I just want to retain some sort of control of my shit.
Mar 26, 10pm-late, RMB100. Arkham, see event listing.
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