Lava La Rue joined Matt Wilkinson on Apple Music 1 today to discuss her upcoming EP ‘Hi Fidelity’. Lava spoke on her genre bending music style, explained the pandemic’s beneficial influence for her music career and the unusual but necessary link up with band, Wet Leg. She also unpacks why she prefers to sing over rap and reveals the growing outreach of her incredibly inspiring music collective Nine8.
Lava La Rue discusses the story behind EP, ‘Hi Fidelity’...
It’s called Hi Fidelity specifically because I think every ... Well, a lot of the music I’d made up until ... Well pre pandemic, was just a selection of sort of lo-fi hip hop inspired freestyles and things that had been made very DIY in the bedroom. Whereas I feel like with this project, there was a bit more of a narrative. Conceptually, I was like, I want to make high fidelity music. I don’t consider myself a lo-fi artist, even though that’s my roots. I was like, I want to be able to make songs exactly how they sound in my head.
Lava La Rue’s speaks on her genre bending music style…
So yeah, I think that whole transition, I suppose, started off me working of I can make this sound good with what I have and then over the pandemic, I was like, cool. I've learned a bit more and I have a bit more around me. And so now I can really take it to where I've always wanted it to be. Hi-Fidelity is me literally just opening the window of where I want to go into where the vision is. It's really just starting and it's me just honing in on some skills that I've wanted to get good at, but I just literally couldn't before.
The benefits the pandemic had on Lava La Rue’s creative direction…
Maybe I would say that also having to do things DIY, it allows you to know what to ask for when you work with other people. Because you saying, oh, you've got good at the production. It's like, yes I have. But also I've been able to work with amazing people where I can vocalize what I want and the pandemic allowed some time for that as well, because I got into production. I was able to be like, hey, can we put this plug-in in it? Do you know what I mean? Can we side chain, this and that was kind of things that I over time needed to watch and learn and try and do things myself, to ask for those things.
The balance between Lava La Rue’s singing and rapping on the new EP…
Right now, I think people are going to hear me exploring the singing a little bit more. It's not that I'm totally ditching rapping. I think that still to this day, people will be like, oh, who's the feature on the song? And I'm like, there's no feature. It's me. And they're like, no, no, no, but who's singing. And I'm like, it's me singing.
The growing outreach of her music collective Nine8…
I would say like first and foremost, we are a friendship group. And it's so funny talking about the collective because these are my mates from school. So when people are like, where do you see in the collective going? I'm like, so where do you see your friendship group with Jill and Bob going in five years? It just happens naturally, doesn't it? And it's amazing seeing everyone grow and thrive in their own respective careers. There's just something about every single member. And it's easy to say that about my best friends, but we all come from different kind of walks of life. We all have the same or similar beliefs and visions. It doesn't always have to be the exact same. But that differentness, but wanting the same outcome is an incredible thing to have with your best friends around you.
Lava La Rue directing a Wetleg music video…
Yeah. No, it was the opposite of that. We had been booked for a couple of the same festivals, but this was the one where I went to check them out. It was in Lisbon and then we ended up going on a bender afterwards. And came back to London, had a pie and over some drunken pints, they were just like, you should come to the Isle of Wight for Christmas. And I was like, all right, cool. And then I went for Christmas. It was really funny. And they had adopted an alpaca and called it Wet Leg and took me to this place called ... There's just different dishes ... A place called like Sandown Beach. And it's literally trapped in the eighties. This is like Napoleon Dynamite, but British.And so I just, on our way to a pub, with Rhian, it was Boxing Day, I think. And she showed me the whole album before it came out and I listened to Your Mom and I instantly had the idea and I was like, okay, okay wait. Imagine you guys are in a shop and you're working there and da, da, da, da, da. And then I'm the kind of person that if I have this idea and I believe in it, I'm a hundred percent making it happen.
