Get to know NLV Records' newest signee, Laces
NLV Records' latest signee Laces is many things, and now he's set to step up out of the underground with his ambitious and creative music.
Having already carved out a place of his own in Australia's underground, DJ and producer LACES is a name you may or may not be familiar with. One part founder of Melbourne clubnight LONER, one part internet club music connoisseur as seen in his DJ sets, and one part rising producer, LACES now looks set to make sure those who aren't familiar with him get acquainted thanks to the release of his new single 'Sunvocus'.
Released as part of a freshly inked deal with NLV Records and the first taste of a forthcoming EP, 'Sunvocus' channels his inspirations from the likes of Cashmere Cat, Nina Las Vegas and Ninajirachi with his own forward-thinking and creative approach to club music to deliver a stirring, hard-hitting and unpredictable single. Lifted from his forthcoming EP, Field Fallacy XVI which is set to drop early 2021, 'Sunvocus' is as about impressive as first impressions come in its ambitious sound design, relentless percussive stabs, glitchy vocal samples and Laces' ability to constantly keep the listener on their toes.
Laces said of 'Sunvocus', "I get so many ads on my feed for obscure mobile games and some of them are kinda sick so I wanted this track to sound like it could be the soundtrack to an overly compressed Instagram ad for a Korean gacha mobile game that you won't remember the name of”.
With plenty more to come from Laces in the months ahead, we got to know the 22-year-old to talk all about his new music, his journey so far, LONER and what's still to come. Check it out below!
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Who are you?
Laces, a 22 year old DJ and producer of internet club music from Melbourne.
How did Laces come to be?
I started producing music like a month before going on a youth exchange program to Japan when I was 16. After the events of the exchange I just decided I wanted to pursue music as my main hobby and ever since have been working towards my idols in music. It was around this 14/15 year old age period where I fell in love with a lot of music coming out of the soundcloud ethos such as acts like DZZ, Yung Lean, early AG Cook, Machinedrum and Qrion alongside falling for a bunch of Luckyme artists at the same time, such as Cashmere Cat and Jacques Greene and diving headfirst into that stage of Jersey club that was so popular around 2015 with the DJ Yolobear releases. After graduating high school I basically committed all my time to going to shows and meeting producers and DJ’s until my entire social life was just filled with electronic music.
What are we talking, vibes-wise?
Every party I go to features some instance of me or a friend of mine slamming DJ tool after DJ tool on some shitty decks set up next to shakey monitor stands and at this point I’m completely in love with fucked up transitions slammed in the red with +20% on the tempo slider. The Laces project eventually has morphed from my experimentations with dance music into a way I can portray these kinds of moments when tracks that formerly stood for something are pushed into some unrecognisable form. In the same way a lot of the music I’ve been working on lately is very regressive of 2000’s JRPGs, especially Square Enix games, I’m trying to use the content of these games to create my own DJ tools.
Tell us about your new single, ‘Sunvocus’?
My new single Sunvocus is a club track that follows no rules really, I wrote the song at 200 bpm and it’s kinda hard to dance to the first drop. I find myself often making dance tracks with irregular rhythms that don't necessarily lend themselves perfectly to being intuitively danceable but, I figured with this track I sort of wanted to lean into this idea with a focus on making the track sound sort of deconstructed and crystalised.
You released the single on NLV Records, what does that mean to you as an emerging artist?
NLV Records for me personally has been a real centerpiece to the Aussie internet club scene in many ways. I’ve been following the label for ages and to find myself releasing here truly feels like a weird dream. For me it’s proving to be super valuable to find and work with people who are interested in similar music plus it’s dope to be on the same label as Ninajirachi because she’s a good friend of mine.
As well as being a DJ and a producer, you also curate parties and founded the Melbourne club night, LONER. Can you tell us a bit about the ethos and intent behind this club night?
Like a lot of other things I do, Loner was really just an excuse for my friends and I to play fucked up club tracks on a big system. My friend Zeal and I came up with the concept of the event at a kebab place outside a gas station after a mutual friend asked us to run a party in the old
upstairs of Korova Milk Bar and we only had a week to do it. Loner is named literally because we were eating at a Doner kebab at the time. Since then the night came to mean a place where DJ’s could play whatever and we would try to sit under the “internet dance music” umbrella so that even loners with music taste no one else shared could enjoy the night.
Given it was created as a way for like minded individuals to connect in a physical space, has lockdown forced you to reconsider what it means to connect with community when we can’t do it in a physical space?
Lockdown really threw the Loner group into a weird place and to be honest we were sort of reeling from some failed locals events here and there. We had been toying with the idea of running online parties of the likes of Minecraft festivals such as Coalchella/Lavapalooza and the internet radio community Datafruits, but in Gmod. Sadly the ideas never really came together. Since lockdown kicked into full gear in Melbourne though, one of the Loner OG’s Velatix started spending a lot of time in VRChat and we ended up launching Loner Online and we haven't looked back since. Because of this new lack of financial restrictions and freedom to book any DJ who has an internet connection, it’s been really impactful for us as a crew to learn how to foster a community focussed on dance music and really has brought the Loner concept so much further since.
Has this impacted or perhaps inspired any changes to the way LONER might exist moving forward when it is able to start again as a club night?
1000%. We’re always talking about how to merge the Loner Online experience back into irl events and the brand has evolved so much in the last year that it would be impossible not to. A new focus for the events is what we needed all along and 2020 has gifted us that.
It’s also taken from your forthcoming EP, Field Fallacy XVI. Can you tell us a bit more about this EP?
Yeah, Sunvocus would be best considered the grand entrance to this EP. I’ve pretty much poured every fiber of myself over the last year and a half into this project and I cannot wait for it to come out.
Where can we hear more of your stuff?
Check out my soundcloud, also I’m probably most active on Twitter tbh. If you want to connect with us personally or hang out with Loner in VR get in the Loner Online discord.
My website: laceslaceslaceslaces.com
Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/laceslaceslaceslaces
Twitter: https://twitter.com/laceslaceslaces
Loner Online website: http://loneronline.com/
Loner Online Discord: invite.loneronline.com
'Sunvocus' is out now. Buy/stream here.
Introduction by Emma Jones
Image by Rochelle Flack
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