Meet a man driven wildly by music. A man classically trained, but rewired with his own two hands. A frequent collaborator, occasional curator and consummate “man behind the curtain” now emerging at the front of something yet unnamed. Somewhere between the concert hall and the club you’ll find his haunting liquid soundscapes, born of hip-hop composition, o’er-strung with chant, hinting at some divine unreachable. Meet Son Lux.

posted by AudioPorn Central

Break

Music: Son Lux
Video: Finbar Mallon

Ryan Lott was born in Denver in 1979. At 2, he moved
to California; at 5, to Connecticut. His father made industrial
adhesives; his mother made the home; he had one brother and one sister.
He was the youngest. Piano lessons were a family rule and Ryan began at
6, counting down, in tears, the clicks of the 15-minute egg-timer. He
hated it, and by the age of 12, he knew he wouldn’t be a classical
concert pianist; instead he’d be a composer. He’d offset this
revelation by performing covers of “Lithium” and “Suck My Kiss” on
guitar in middle school dance bands. His parents brought him to Atlanta
for high school; in turn, high school brought him drums, punk bands and
a piano teacher who smuggled him a few lessons in jazz and pop.

In
his third year studying composition and piano at Indiana University,
Ryan began collaborating with a ballet and modern dance student who
would become his wife. Writing music to her choreography set off a
hunger in him that would soon grow into megalomania. In the newlyweds’
post-collegiate home of Cleveland, Ryan conceived a multimedia art gala
dubbed CONNECT. The series’ second event featured 30 artists of various
inclinations; he collaborated with 20, while entertaining dance
commissions countrywide. With his wife and two friends, he founded the
charitable ASH (Art Serving Humanity) Ensemble, and composed a piece
for saxophone and tape that debuted in Slovenia. Back home, Ryan found
himself performing to New York City for the first time—from inside of
the Guggenheim—and collecting on two prestigious Ohio arts grants. In
2007, he moved to New York, accepting a job as a fulltime composer. His
12-year-old self smiled; Ryan should have rested.

But something
was growing inside of the man. Through all his teeth-cutting on various
styles and accomplishment through collaboration, there was something
pushing against his guts: Ryan Lott needed to go solo. For three years
he’d been compulsively collecting sounds—thousands of them—one and
two-note fragments sampled from his personal collection and the local
library’s. He turned his trained ear to recognizing consistent aural
hues, built a palette, then began arranging not by melody—as a composer
would—but by rhythm, as a beatmaker. He’d been making an album without
realizing it. Now, for the first time, Ryan set out to make the music
inside of him. It’d be a sort of pop, but divorced from verse-chorus
form—memorable music without a hook. And he’d sing (also a first), but
not traditional lyrics. His words would be small snippets—things read
or overheard—open-ended and repeated like chants. Single notes became
pulsing electronic orchestras; simple words became transcendent. Son
Lux was born. And with it, the album At War with Walls and Mazes.

As
befits the Ryan Lott legacy, Son Lux’s debut performance was a
headlining college festival slot alongside Sufjan Stevens and Emmylou
Harris (the result of winning a songwriting competition). His second
show was at New York’s Knitting Factory, opening for Sole. Played live,
At War becomes a thing of shifting parts and rhythms, Ryan breaking
down the songs and reassembling at will, while overhead digital visuals
warp, coil and collide in improvised harmony (courtesy of At War
cover artist Joshue Ott). The impression left is warm and colorful with
smatterings of darkness, something alien yet familiar, easy but
indefinable. Like all good art, Son Lux is tapped directly into that
great otherworldly unknown that feels right at home in the world we
actually know.

Ryan composes two pieces of music a day for Fluid
NY, a thriving editorial house, recently wrapped his third large-scale
collaboration with the acclaimed Gina Gibney Dance company, and is
working on the next Son Lux album.