September 2020 – Singapore – Last month Son Lux dropped ‘Tomorrows I’, the first album in a three-volume body of work, which will unfurl over the coming year through City Slang.
Today, they reveal the next element of this ambitious project – a rework of album track “Only” with iconic soul singer William Bell taking the vocal lead.
“Only (Chasing You)” reconsiders the album version, with the mellifluous voice of William Bell replacing the crushed gravel of Lott‘s original delivery. The song explores the intangible and temporal nature of identity and relationships. It reflects on the blurring of time passing and evolving from small to increments to entire lifetimes, and throughout, an increasing feeling of losing, not gaining, identity. Bhatia and Chang fashion “Only” into an elastic lurch, where musical time shrinks and expands without warning. Bell’s delivery contends with this elasticity, exclaiming, “When you took me from the days, you took me from the years.”
More pervasive than a virus, anxiety and urgency have spread across our physical and virtual landscapes. The growing inequities of centuries-old and current-day complexes of oppression have reached a critical and necessary breaking point, forcing us out of our severe isolation back together in a call for justice. All the while, the continued trajectory towards climate catastrophe still creeps across the horizon into our view, another result of the valuing of profit over people.
These defining traits of the present moment find parallels on the newest body of work by Son Lux: ‘Tomorrows’, a long-format album to be released in three volumes over the course of a year. On ‘Tomorrows’, Ryan Lott, Rafiq Bhatia, and Ian Chang train their sights on volatile principles: imbalance, disruption, collision, redefinition. But for all of its instability, the album’s exploration of breaking points and sustained frictional places is ultimately in service of something rewarding and necessary: the act of questioning, challenging, tearing down and actively rebuilding one’s own identity.
Son Lux — “Only (Chasing You) [feat. William Bell]”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3X0x4hSnzQ&feature=youtu.be
Son Lux is a geographically and culturally diverse band, with Rafiq Bhatia, Ian Chang, and Ryan Lott each bringing their unique sonic approach to create an otherworldly whole. Son Lux’s balancing of raw emotional intimacy and meticulous electronic constructions, coupled with the act of distilling their varied influences, has most strongly shaped their identity.
Based in New York, Rafiq Bhatia is the first-generation American son of Muslim immigrant parents who trace their ancestry to India by way of East Africa. Early influences such as Jimi Hendrix, John Coltrane, and Madlib—as well as mentors and collaborators including Vijay Iyer and Billy Hart—prompted him to see music as a way to actively shape and represent his own identity, not limited by anyone else’s prescribed perspective.
When Ian Chang describes his creative process, the phrase “third culture” keeps coming up. Born in the colony of Hong Kong in 1988, Chang has lived a nomadic life. Stationed out of New York for 10 years and since relocated to Dallas, Texas, he built an impressive roster of progressive pop collaborators such as Moses Sumney, Joan As Policewoman, and Matthew Dear, among others, all while performing internationally and recording as a member of Son Lux and Landlady.
Ryan Lott makes his home in Los Angeles, but grew up all over the United States. Music was the one constant, his formative years spent at the piano. In addition to an extensive career writing music for dance, he also has become a sought after composer for advertising, television, and film. Lott’s feature film credits include The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby (2014), Paper Towns (2015), and Mean Dreams (2017). He has co-produced and co-written music for and with Woodkid, Sufjan Stevens, and Lorde.
With each new work, Son Lux has forwarded their uniquely mercurial vision, their brilliantly fluid approach to genre and structure drawing on a genre-agnostic groundwork of soul, hip-hop, and experimental improvisation. Balancing raw emotional intimacy and meticulous electronic constructions, Son Lux have crafted a carefully cultivated musical language all their own, rooted in curiosity, individuality, and commanding creativity.
Single art by Yuanyuan Su
“Only (Chasing You)” [feat. William Bell] is now available to stream here:
sonlux.lnk.to/OnlyWilliamBell
‘Tomorrows I’ Track Listing
1. Dissolve
2. Plans We Made
3. Bending Shadows
4. Only
5. Days Past
6. Honesty
7. Into Wind
8. Last Light
9. Undertow
10. Involution
Album art by Mareo Rodriquez, additional layout and image editing by Yuanyuan Su
Son Lux – ‘Tomorrows’ Teaser ‘Tomorrows |’ is available on all streaming platforms here: sonlux.lnk.to/tomorrows
