A little less than a year ago, Lapalux was releasing cassettes. He had two, in fact. The first, manufactured in 2008 in a ridiculous run, was entitled “Forest EP” and it was as if it had never existed. He made it public himself again last March, this time in digital format, and it made a bit more of a splash in the blogosphere, but not much. The second cassette may have been the consequence of “Forest EP” showing up on the Internet - it was what began, piece by piece, to build up Stuart Howard’s reputation as a producer who promised a dream world, a wonderland, which on his website, he identifies as a sort of “electro/organic sound continuum”. “Many Faces Out Of Focus” occupied the number six slot at Pictures Music, the same exquisite label that had previously spotted the new blood in spongy-textured English electronic music like Dark Sky, Seams and Koreless. Since then - the month of April - there has been only silence. It wasn’t an uncomfortable silence, because Lapalux was by then a shared secret among a few initiates in the Garden of Eden, but now the silence has been broken with a leap forward; as is fitting for a musician with a discourse and consequent inclusion in the exclusive Brainfeeder family. His sound has evolved, matured, presenting an even more shining version of his sunny downtempo, riddled with buzzing and voices with the pitch distorted.
Lapalux is one of those names that have relaxed the manners of the more melancholy faction of British bass - which starts with Burial and has no end as yet - taking musical pulp and producing refreshing ambrosia. His music never seems to solidify, like a flow of sounds and impressions that never seem to stay in one place or in your memory, like a perfume, or a glance of a body in movement. As “When You’re Gone” develops, the majority of the EP sounds more aerial than solid: “102 Hours Of Introductions” is a sort of electronic jazz in zero-gravity, like when Flying Lotus flies out of all orbits and loses himself in the astral distance. Towards the end, “Moments (feat. Py)” accumulates some reinforced bass that penetrate the ear like needles, but underneath, there are only lines of amorphous synthesizer and a voice that seems to be that of a water or forest sprite (naiads and nymphs, but in post-dubstep version). Then the breaks get stronger and the sub-bass tighten up, but the textures continue to stick to the skin and leak into the pores like a layer of steam–“Gutter Glitter”, “Yellow 90’s”, the ambient conclusion of “Face Down, Eyes Shut”. These are the reasons why Lapalux, as the UK’s answer to the sepia-tinted psychedelics and sandy feel of American equivalents such as matthewdavid or Salva, is put forward as one of the future talents of gentle, glossy electronic music - what was before, and still is today - known as downtempo.
