Son Lux is an absolute genius. That’s no small praise to start this off, but it’s as good of an entry point as any, given that I’ve slept on posting anything from his debut album, At War with Walls and Mazes, until now.
The prominent colors used in the above press photo of Ryan Lott, aka he who is Son Lux, are mildly amusing to me-because, in my mildly synaesthetic brain, the music of Son Lux is nowhere near those hues. This stuff glistens in sunlight like dew, and shivers in corners when placed in darkness. With At War…finding its home on Anticon, the home of dorm-hop luminaries like Dosh and WHY? (and given press photos like the one used here), you’d be seemingly on track to expect Son Lux to sound like that dude with the kinda-beard in your Lit class, the one who always wears the Bonnaroo shirt and shows up late with The Roots audibly blaring from his iPod shuffle, if he sucked a gallon drum of helium and invested in a cracked drum machine.
You’d be seemingly on track, and very, very wrong. Son Lux goes for the throat and the heart at once- like the Sufjan Stevens of glitch, he’s never one to let a simple sampled pizacatto string plucking ride when an entire string section, processed and chopped into a heady, swirling cocktail could play out for minutes at a time. This isn’t the music of understatement-it’s another step towards modern classical, realizing that (again, like the aforementioned Sufjan) the beauty in genius in the current remix culture is when a piece of music is crafted from the ground up by hand, and yet still remains firmly within a pop gensis context.
While this isn’t the most brilliant or jaw-dropping of the 7 songs on At War With Walls and Mazes, it’s the one that first elicited a repeat play from me (and then served as the catalyst for my starting the album over, from the beginning, and actually listen), and is my go-to Son Lux song. Those first twelve seconds hold and wash like Bono was about to break free from Eno’s console control, and then a beat that wouldn’t have been out of place on a Lex records album around the time of Boom Bip flows forth from the ambiance. Then…wind instruments. And Ryan’s always-pained vocals, intoning essentially the same kinda-pathetic and therefore-heartbreaking plea through the whole song. At the 3:30 breakdown, it becomes clear this is a movement in three parts, with the genius belied by the simplicity. I think…and I might be wrong…that this is the future of modern pop. And I welcome it.
Oh but wait…there’s this…
My Brightest Diamond: Inside A Boy (Son Lux remix)
I DARE YOU TO TAKE THIS SONG ON. I double-dog dare you. THIS is the song that made me realize I absolutely had to post on Son Lux, because he’s simply a modern compositional genius.He takes My Brightest Diamond on as a muse, allows the dark iceprincess persona of her new album to permeate his sonic architecture, and then…fucking wrecks it with industrial jungle and that string section. If you doubt the sheer force this combination has, there are so, so many moments I could point you towards: 2:30, for example, when the first real “blow-up” happens, or the 3:30 syncapation of drums and strings and Shara’s wordless coo. Whatever, though-this whole thing is jaw-dropping perfection.
This, as of right now, is my favorite remix of the year, and shall probably remain so.
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