It’s great to meet you, Lucie. So how are you feeling about the release, this is your first one isn't it?

Yeah it’s a bit of a funny one, I guess this is my first official release. I tried to self-release a few tracks back at the end of 2021 but this definitely feels more polished. Kind of putting more thought into this as a rounded project, as opposed to me just being, ‘oh, I’ve made these things’. I’m really excited, I’m very new to all of this as well. I’m definitely learning as I go along and I’m excited to throw it out there.

I guess that’s kind of the beauty of YR4 as a label as well, it’s kind of new to everyone. What brought you to create music in the first place? How did your relationship with music begin?

I remember when I was younger, my dad listened to a lot of 90’s and early 00’s dance and electronic music. I’m definitely more chilled now, but when I was a kid I was super bouncy and I think I enjoyed the predictability of dance music, the consistent beat and build of the genre. One of my favourite songs was Free from Desire, I even made up a stupid dance to it as a kid. So, I think I’ve always had a bond with music through my dad in a way. In terms of actually making music, it’s something that I’ve always been interested in. I started out playing guitar and singing and expressing myself because that’s just what was accessible to me at the time. I was like 10 years old and wanted to be Diana Vickers. I couldn’t read music and I still can’t, but it was the physicality of using my voice and holding an instrument, to make what I was feeling. Sinking into something that was tactile, that I could hear and feel, if that makes sense.

So it’s been quite a consistent thread throughout your life, making music. How did that progress into making electronic music, from playing the guitar and singing?

I really enjoyed playing instruments, but I don’t think it ever properly reflected the sounds that I wanted to be making or even necessarily what I would listen to. So I’d try and replicate the artists that use sounds that I wanted to make. I’d watch videos about the sorts of instruments they’d use and how to build and perform sounds just in the hope that I’d be able to learn to do that as well.

What artists were they?

I guess in the beginning I was really into a lot of ambient electronic dance, a lot of Jamie XX and Bonobo’s very first album. Music that makes you feel there’s a rhythm to your emotions in a way. And yeah I then started listening to more hard groove and euphoric trance that had heavier melodic tones to it. I think a lot of my taste now stems from the music that I remember listening to when I was younger. So The Prodigy, Chemical Brothers, Orbital; anything that had a heavy, synthy rhythm to it. Old school synthy stuff too, I remember listening to Kylie Minogue’s first album as well, so there’s no specific genre that I take my influences from, it’s a variety of things.

I listened to your YR4’s launch party mix and I heard the hard groove influences, but there was a lot of UK influence as well; jungle, breaks and dub. Listening to the release, your tracks feel more introspective and a little calmer, which seems to echo the two sides of the music you grew up with.

Yeah, definitely. The entire release is a bit rough and ready, and I think that really shows who I am. It’s not pristine, it’s not put together. I made them in 2022, after having finally gotten some decks and taught myself how to mix other people’s tunes. Then I was like oh it’d be cool to make my own tracks and mix them in. And so then I’ve just slowly taught myself how to produce, even first using Garage band. Obviously it’s not a super technical piece of software, but it helped me build the basics to then move to Ableton. So yeah I think these tracks are a product of exploring that creativity in learning how to build a track. I never had a vision for what they were going to sound as a whole. This definitely reflects how I work creatively, it’s more of a subconscious process. I am then retrospectively able to put a name to those thoughts and feelings, which is reflective of the way that I process my own emotions.

Would you also want to play more of this ambient stuff out at parties as well?

Yeah I think so, it’s definitely something I’m still figuring out. I guess it does depend too, like if I came on after someone who was really dancey and high energy, which is how I usually play, it would be a bit weird to play a melancholic ambient set. I’m trying to explore a way to bridge the gap between the two, maybe by looking back at my early trance or progressive influences like DJ Sasha: it’s high energy, but it has that ambient, melancholic feel that runs through it. It’s sort of a journey: thinking about how I can translate that? How can I incorporate my tracks and the feeling behind them into the set itself? Hopefully I’ll have figured that out by the time that Avalon Cafe gig comes around.

You mentioned that you started creating these tracks in 2022, right? So it’s been three years? How has it been moulding them throughout those three years? How did it start?

I think I made them and then started playing around performing them, just mixing them into a set when I used to play a lot of warehouse parties. I was freelancing at the same time back then and there was also a lot of personal stuff going on that kind of took me away from producing. So I didn’t really touch them for a while, but I knew that it was something I’d come back to. I think I listened to them so much that it was important for me to have that space and separation away from them. So now I listen to them and they’re so reflective of me at the time. I use them almost as a groundwork for the rest of my musical output.

Are there any DJs or artists that you're particularly influenced by?

That’s a good question. There’s almost too many. I’ve been listening to a lot of D. Tiff any and Maara. I’m really into the more proggy stuff that they’re making. It’s got a real gritty undertone to it, which is something that I don’t think I’ve really explored within my own music yet, because a lot of what I’ve made so far is very ambient, more of a light feel to it, whereas I think I’d quite like to see how that would translate into something that’s got a bit more grit to it. I think it’s the way they use vocals, it’s a similar way to how I use mine. If you just listen to the tracks without the vocals, it obviously just wouldn’t sound the same, it wouldn’t have the same feeling to it. That’s something that I really see in my own work as well, because the vocals tie the track together. It just completes the feel of the song, so yeah I definitely take a lot of influence from them.

Do you record the vocals yourself or do you use samples?

I record them myself, on my iPhone; nothing super professional or technical! I kinda like not knowing what it’s going to sound like until I’m actually doing it. I’ll be going through a song and then I’ll have this melody in my head and I just work through it like okay, that would sound quite nice to overlay here and there.

There’s definitely this rough and ready style to your production and I think there’s a kind of beauty in that you don’t need all this fancy equipment.

Yeah, I don’t want to pretend to be something that I’m not. I don’t have any training in producing or music engineering or any other shit. I can’t read music, and anything that I make, I want it to be reflective of me and where I’m at and also my background as well. My family weren’t mega rich and so I wanna show that you don’t have to have all this fancy stuff . You can just create. You can just make stuff and it doesn’t have to be polished. You can drive yourself crazy trying to make something that sounds perfect and that’s definitely something we found when mastering the tracks. I remember when I first sent them over to YR4, I was expecting that they would just be demos to something else that I would make, but Henry and Alex were really encouraging. They were just like why don’t we just release these because they already sound like a finished product. And I’d never heard that from anyone.

How did your kind of relationship with YR4 come about? How do you know Henry and Alex?

Basically through a friend of a friend’s boyfriend and then I DJ’d at Henry’s 30th birthday, which was such a sick night. In this club in Deptford, a bit of a dirty little dungeon. The sound system’s a bit janky. It’s still cash only, it’s run by an old guy called Dave and he buys all the booze from the Asda across the road. I think everyone was on point that night.

And Henry, how did you approach Lucy first of all, for her to play at the launch and secondly to create something to release?

I think approaching you again for the party was already in a sense of utilising the community we’ve already got. Alex and I are starting this from foundations, we don’t really have any backing, no investment or money. We’re saying that we want this to be something that feels like it's got a real authentic platform and we should be utilising our existing network and building it out and out. And then after the event Lucie reached out and said oh here’s a track I made, maybe you’d want to use it as a bit of a promo for the event.

So do you want to walk me through your writing process? Is there anything that particularly inspires you to sit down and say right, I’m going to make a track today?

I really have to be in the right frame of mind for it. If I’m forcing myself to do it, I won’t be in the right fl ow for actually making it. I don’t know what I’m making until I start putting stuff down and playing things. But I’ll normally just start with a chord progression on my synth that has a nice feel to it and then I’ll just build from there, layering from the bassline of a synth. I’ll often build a track around that, then I’ll end up getting rid of half of it and it’ll morph into something else. I never really have a vision so nothing tends to stay in the same place. It’s quite a chaotic approach to making music. That also comes from spending so much time listening to five, ten seconds over and over again and thinking okay there’s something in this section that doesn’t quite feel right. Then like I said, the vocals are something that ties it all together and I won’t know that it’s finished until I’m able to listen to it and think ‘this sounds like a reflection of a feeling or emotion’.

Did you have any particular kind of emotion or feeling that you wanted to convey through these two tracks?

Looking back, the feeling I wanted to convey was something quite piney, not quite melancholy, but full of yearning. It’s got this sense of missing something: missing home or a sense of place, which I think came from the emotions I was processing when I made the tracks. I was going through therapy at the time, working through a lot of things from growing up, so the music became a kind of reflection on that. I see it as an homage to the grief or loss that comes with change. I think that’s what I was going for in making these.

I think you can feel that in the tracks. Because you started it a while ago, do you think you’ve progressed in that emotion? Would you want that conveyed in any future releases?

I think for any future releases, I want them to feel like a breath of fresh air, like the feeling of coming up for air, you know? The idea that this is where we were, and this is where we are now. I’ve definitely processed a lot of what I was going through back then, and I think that’s what I’d like to convey next. It feels like a natural progression.

Is there anyone in particular you go to for their opinion on a track you’ve made?

Honestly, my dad. I always show my tracks to my dad, even if it’s really unfinished. He’s good at being brutally honest and he listens to loads of music, he’s got a good brain for it. I got a lot of my early musical influences from him and even now we still listen to the same music together, still send each other tracks, so I trust his judgement on those things.

Does he make music as well?

No. No, it’d be cool if he did. But maybe I’ll get him to start and we can do a little father daughter duo. Like Floorplan!

Can you walk me through your setup?

Totally. I keep it pretty simple. I’ve got a little Arturia synth, which I use for most of my sounds. I love it, it looks great and it’s just fun to play with, loads of little arps you can mess around with. Then I’ve got a Korg sampler, where I put my samples and build beats, which I also use as a kind of mini drum machine. I also plug in my bass guitar sometimes, which helps me connect physically to the music and to translate what’s in my head into stuff that’s on the computer. Then I plug everything through Ableton and I’ve got a second screen, but that’s about it. I’d love to get more hardware one day, but it’s quite expensive and I’m still having fun exploring the sounds I can make with what I have. I’ve been to Alex’s studio before and had a little play around and that was really fun, so I’d definitely be open to doing more studio work, especially for future releases. It feels like the right sort of time to make something more polished and intentional that’s more reflective of where I’m at now.

Are there any other exciting things on the horizon for you? Do you have any mixes coming out? Any gigs you’re playing?

So we have the YR4 gig at Avalon Cafe in November, which will be really fun, I’m super excited for that. And yeah I’m gonna be recording a few more mixes soon, to showcase a little bit of what’s to come. Then after that, I want to be playing out as much as I can, I’m hoping that recording these mixes and getting the tracks will bring more opportunities as well!

Do you have an ideal venue that you’d love to play?

To be honest, fabric would be insane. I love it there. The Cause is definitely up there too, their sound system’s amazing. Such a huge venue with so many different pockets.

What do you think of the nightlife scene in London right now, is it in a good place?

Honestly it’s really sad seeing so many venues closing and not really being able to cope with prices and so on, it’s definitely a reflection of the times we’re in. But having said that, it does open space for dance music and rave as more of a community-based thing, I think it can be used almost as a bit of a protest. It’s super important that we utilise community in that sense because, when it all comes down to it, that’s the only thing we’ve got if these spaces aren’t able to keep the doors open despite being there for years and years and years. I love seeing DIY gigs popping up everywhere and it goes to show that they stand the test of time more so than the monetary aspect of nightlife.

You mentioned earlier that you used to play warehouse gigs, and I feel that all these venues shutting down is pushing the scene underground again, to warehouses and forests. Is that something that you’d want to be involved in?

Oh, yeah, 100%. I think that’s way more my scene. At the risk of sounding like a bit of a wanker, I don’t love the capitalist chokehold that a lot of the music scene is under. I love seeing artists boycotting festivals and clubs and places that have ties to these massive corps, it’s like one of the only ways that we can stand up for what we believe in, without sounding corny. So I would love to be more involved in that underground space where it’s a little bit more free from that grip and there’s more space for marginalised communities. I think creativity flourishes more when it’s under pressure.

Nice and finally do you have a particular track that you love playing out at the moment?

Yeah there’s this really new, underground artist called Lucie… Haha! No, it’s actually one of the tracks that I played at the end of YR4 launch. It’s called Teardrops (Sport Mix by KVLR). I really enjoy finishing on that because I get to that point in the night where I’ve started mixing in some disco and funk acapellas with hard grooves. So it fits quite nicely and it’s a really nice way to close off the night because it’s not a huge song, but it helps to bring you down a little bit. And everyone knows the lyrics to it.