Losing Ourselves to ‘Out Into’: A Conversation with Son Lux

(Photo Credit: Anna Powell Denton)

We had the chance to sit with electronic rockers Son Lux and chat about their latest effort ‘Out Into’! The three-piece consisting Ryan Lott, Ian Chang, and Rafiq Bhatia have had a busy period which includes scoring two films, one of which was nominated for an Oscar. Somehow in that time, they managed to create a solid record we think you’re going to love. Check out what the band had to say!

Out Into was created in the aftermath of your work on two dynamic film soundtracks in the Oscar-nominated Everything Everywhere All at Once and Marvel’s Thunderbolts. On this one, intentionality stood out to me as every beat, guitar strum, and vocal fluctuation from the three of you seemed meticulously placed. However, I was blown away when I read there was much improvisation on a lot of the tracks as well. With that in mind, can you share how you prepare and craft high profile soundtracks versus how you approach working on music that slides into your studio discography?

Rafiq - “That's a great question. I think there is we really love collaboration and there's nothing like working on the big team that film scoring necessitates and working to colloborate and realize a big vision. In our discography, before film scoring, listeners would hear things that kind of had big sweeping movements and things that would turn on a dime, sort of what happens in a flim. Rather than us being inspired by the source, we felt like that was something that we could do more intimately and having songs you could really sink into for repeated listening.”

A theme that seems to play out throughout the record is that of losing yourself. Whether that be work or life responsibilities, we are in a day and age where we’re constantly on the go and constantly taking in information. Can you share a bit about how you arrived at these thematic elements for the record?

Ryan - “When it comes to writing lyrics, I'm always listening to the instrumenal world we're building as a band. The lyrics are usually a late in the process kind of step. Which I think is in some ways is different than most songwriters. Where they build the lyrics and then find music that fits it, I do it in reverse. I look for something that's intuitive response to the sound world we're creating. I was noting across the album a feeling of recalibration and discovery and redefining one's self. It’s a common theme across our records, it’s a theme of something that is happening to us as a band. We're coming out of one mode of being, such as scoring films and touring, then recording. For me as a husband and a father and constantly feeling like I'm constantly reinventing myself to my surroundings. I have this growing sense there is never a start and stop or entrance to everything.”

Another theme that plays out on the record is sharp critiques of White Nationalism that exists within the current Trump administration, especially on the razor sharp “No God Like A King” which serves as the capstone of the record. How has the current political situation that we find ourselves in shaped your songwriting and outlook for chaotic present and future we face?

Ryan - “I'm definitely inspired by the absolute disintegration of things that were aboslute realities, me as a straight white kid, where things basically worked and people behaved the way they should. There was a sense of shared values across perspective”.

You all blend elements of hip-hop, electronica, and rock pretty effortlessly in this record. You are all self professed fans of the hip-hop genre. How did the sound of hip-hop influence how you approached creating the sonic landscape you developed on Out Into?

Ian - “I would say that one of the beautiful things about having been a band for ten yars is that, I would say that to your point that it comes together that embodies a lot of things stylistically something that doesn't go together. Son Lux is a project that seems as something where we put things that unexpectedly go together, so it's great hearing you pick up on that. It becomes embodied even to the way that we play. For this record, some of it started out as improvization, it's become a language that is very natural to us. For me as the drummer I've obsessed and listedn to hip hop and beats. I've spent a lot of time having such a reverence for the genre and it's a part of the way we play. The bass lines as well which Rafiq plays like on a song "Want You to Love", people would say "Oh this feels like hip hop in a way". Ryan sampled it in a way that your'e sampling a vinyl record in the entirety of it all at once. Then you add in the elements of our curiosity. One of the joys for me of being in this band is we get to be ourselves and find a sound that's unique”.

The recording of Out Into was done in spurts between other projects. How did starting and stopping sessions for this one allow you to develop themes, rhythms, and a sound you were happy with?

Rafiq - “The way that we work is that honestly, it's pretty typical for people that come from making music like electronic music. You're working with existing frameworks of audio, except we create it. We don't write the songs and then go in, we kind of find something like grain of something that is interesting to us like a chef finding ingredients for a dish. We're sort of working outward kind of from the particular to the general. When you look at the process of making music, not only is that space/time is not jarring it's actually beneficial. We have this perspective of having a break of not being invested in having baggage of doing this work to make something happen. When you're in the middle of something, it's hard to decouple, whereas if you take a break and something either comes back thinking this wasn't working but now does and the opposite is true. Ryan is someone who relishes having two or three things happen at once.”

Ryan - “It's kind of the old attage of just sleeping on it. There's also logistics of getting three different guys who live all over together to crank something out. Like Rafiq said, we're buliding batches of ingredients.”

Ian - “There was a song we wrote in the studio we wrote and recorded to be something and then was sampled to be something else. "No God Like a King" was originally intended to be an instrumental and then Ryan ended up putting lyrics to it later.”

Ryan - “I don't feel like an intuitive songwriter out of thin air, wheras I'm a songwriter that responds to sound. I never come to the table with lyrics or vocal ideas. Over the course of ten years, I've never come to the table with lyrics or vocal ideas.”