Interview: 5 minutes with Loux

Loux are an electro-pop three piece, featuring guitar, drums, electronics and vocals and are currently based in Leeds, UK. The band quickly built a following after playing Blue Dot Festival in 2017, Loux will be playing a number of shows in 2018 around the UK, as well as continuing their successful “Loux’s Room” residency at Oporto in Leeds, which is a monthly night, with a line up curated by Loux themselves.

Their latest single “cool” was released on May 11th, and is about following a journey of realisation that you are no longer that insecure girl that acts laid back and “cool” to conform within a relationship, and subsequently the track becomes a declaration of self-acceptance. Loux have been added to Long Division Festival (June 1st-3rd in Wakefield City Centre across multiple venues this year) which will surely grow their unique brand of alt-infused electro-pop.

We caught up with Loux on messing with pedals and their exciting Long Division Festival appearance:

Set the tone for us. Why the arts?

We all love having no money.

I think it’s inarguably one of the most enjoyable career paths to take. As soon as the smallest thing goes well, it gives you such a great feeling, because it’s usually a product or piece of music you’ve poured all your effort into. So yeah, I guess the rewards. Also it’s pretty great not to have to wear a suit and talk about stocks and shares.

Which comes first when you’re producing – the sound or the idea?

Always the idea. In fact, some of the sounds still aren’t really definite, we’re still changing them around all the time!

Does your material feature any collaborations?

For our first two releases, we collaborated with an artist in Manchester called Amber Davenport, who designed the artwork. As of yet we haven’t actually done any musical collaborating, but I think we will do soon. We’ve got our eyes on a few things!

What’s on your current playlist?

Sylvan Esso, Parcels, Rae Morris, Ariana Grande.

What techniques do you experiment with to get your original sound?

A lot of the parts in our tracks are really guitar based, and Chris experiments with pedals a ton so that’s what most of the weirder sounds are. Chris and Jordan spend quite a while choosing synths too, and we’ve got a big mix of software and hardware synths on our tracks. We experiment quite a lot with everything though to be honest!

Take us through a day in the recording studio.

We’ve never actually been to a big studio. We’ve done all of our recording with Chris (guitarist), who works as a producer/ engineer. Each time we’ve started with a guide track which is basically just Chris and Jordan playing through the track once and producing a really rough attempt at the song. After that we’ll do a location recording of the drums. For our first two singles we used “The Venue” in Leeds, which is a really large classical concert hall attached to the College of Music and the BBC. We’ll then go to Chris’s place and get all the guitars and the main synths done and spend a day messing around with pedals. After that we’ll record the vocals (usually about 6 times because Jordan is always ill so we just have to keep doing them until she sounds healthy), and then Chris will do a basic mix. After Chris has done a rough mix we’ll work out what the song is still lacking and put in some more parts (usually synths). When we’re happy with that Chris will do a proper mix of the track until he’s happy with everything, and then get Jordan and Ali round to go through their parts in the song until they’re both completely happy too.

Was there a specific moment in your life where you thought, “this is what I want to do”?

I think for all of us it was when we studied music at university. We’d all probably thought about doing it, but only after getting to Leeds and starting to work on things did we all kind of see it as a viable career path. Once you’ve decided it’s what you want to do – doing anything else is pretty rubbish.

What do you keep close by while you’re playing a set?

Not a lot to be honest! Jordan always takes some water, and Chris usually brings some spares bits of equipment like strings and patch cables, but that’s about it!

Any emerging artists on your radar?

Flynt, Litany, Laminate Pet Animal.

What gets your creative juices flowing?

I think they’re always flowing to be honest. Chris and Jordan do most of the writing, and they do a lot of that together. Jordan has to be in a certain mood to want write lyrics, but I think we can kind of force each other into it now. Once one of us is in the mood to write, the other one sort of falls into place.

Take us through your collection of gear, tech or software that accompanies your creative expression.

Haha, Chris and Ali have quite a collection between them. To keep it brief, we’ll just do stuff they can’t really live without. Chris uses a UAD apollo Quad for all of our recording and mixing, and our singles are littered with UAD plugins. The vocals are recorded with a Blue Kiwi through a Focusrite ISA preamp too, which is quite a big part of our vocal sound. Pedal wise too, Chris uses a strymon big sky a lot, and an elctroharmonix POG2. He’s also just got s Strymon Timeline which is making its way into the new songs a bit.

Ali is really into lighting, so he’s got a pretty snazzy lighting rig which we use when we’re headlining shows. He syncs it all up to our tracks so the entire show plays along to all our songs. He also used an SPD SX in most of our songs.

Jordan uses a Korg Minologue for all the live synth parts, which is a really great little synth too. It’s super versatile and easy to use.

Any side projects you’re working on?

We all do little bits here and there quite often, but no big projects as such at the moment. Loux is definitely the main thing, as most of the other bands we were all in have taken a break for the time being. Chris works as a producer a lot, so he’s working with tons of other bands and artists all the time, and Jordan and Chris have started playing some live shows with a band called Piles of Clothes too. for now though Loux is definitely our main focus!

Could you detail the meaning or inspiration behind your latest single titled “Cool”? And could you detail it’s recording process?

Jordan: With ‘Cool’ it’s kind of sarcastic, and a bit of a reaction to all the ‘cool girls’ out there. If you’ve read or seen the film ‘Gone Girl’ the reference might be clearer, that’s where the original idea came from for me. I’ve read the book and seen the film because I love psychological thrillers and there’s this ‘cool girl’ in it who just got me thinking about all the girls out there that just…go along with everything I guess, whether it’s going along with your boyfriends plans, or just agreeing with everything he says so you don’t appear crazy and annoying. I see all these girls and I’m definitely not one! So this is just my way of saying that’s ok if you want to be like that but I’m not, and if I’m not happy with something I’m not going to just sit back and let it happen, you’re gonna know about it!”

The Recording process is the exact same as the one in the question above!

Loux are set to perform at Long Division festival in Wakefield running from 1-3 June. What are you most looking forward to about performing at this festival?

Even though it’s so close, none of us have spent much time in Wakefield before, so we’re all really looking forward to seeing what it has to offer I guess, and just seeing a load of bands we haven’t seen before. We’ve never played there before so we’re just excited to be in a new place, even though it’s really close to home, haha.

Any plans for an LP in the near future

I don’t think so. Not yet anyway! An EP will definitely be coming, but we haven’t quite got the resources for an LP yet (much as we’d all love to record one).

Loux will be performing at Long Division Festival (June 1st-3rd in Wakefield City Centre across multiple venues:

Order tickets to Long Division Festival HERE

For more information follow Loux on Facebook