logo

Name: Lux Lyall

Nationality: Pakistani-Sri Lankan-Dutch
Occupation: Singer, songwriter
Current Release: Lux Lyall's new single "Draw Blood" is out via Smoking Mermaid.
Recommendations: To listen: Lalleshwari - Lullabies in a Glass wilderness; To read, and look at beautiful photos: Haunted by History by Craig Owens.

If you enjoyed this interview with Lux Lyall and would like to stay up to date with her music, visit her official website. She is also on Instagram, Facebook, and twitter.



When did you start writing/producing/playing music and what or who were your early passions and influences? What was it about music and/or sound that drew you to it?

I wrote and recorded my very first (really shitty) songs at around 15. I don’t feel like I took the whole thing seriously enough until very recently though. I've always kind of written rhyming quatrains and couplets, but I only realized they could serve as song lyrics when I was leaving high school.

My early influences were really, really varied. I loved a lot of classic rock when I was younger, because I was just learning about bands like Led Zeppelin. I was also listening to Hendrix for the first time and it was completely different to whatever was playing on the radio (not that I don’t have 1990s/ 2000s pop “guilty pleasures”, but at the time classic bands were a new and exciting thing to me).

I was getting really into bands like Hole, and Garbage, and artists like Katie Jane Garside at the same time, and along with that I was listening to a lot of stuff like The Andrews Sisters and Rosemary Clooney.

I think I was just as all over the place then as I am now in terms of inspiration and influences.

When I listen to music, I see shapes, objects and colours. What happens in your body when you're listening and how does it influence your approach to creativity?

There is music I love dearly that I can no longer listen to because it takes me back to times and places I find excruciating to look back on. I have to be in a very specific place to listen to music that takes me back to my childhood or happy moments, because sometimes that feeling of warmth seems really far away.

When I was in junior high school I was a pretty basic goth kid and I still remember sitting in my best friend's bedroom, walls painted black, mutilated “My Little Pony” toys hanging off the ceiling, generally being pains in the ass … but we were listening to Pet Sounds, and “Wouldn’t it be nice” was playing and she looked over at me and said “isn’t this the saddest fuckin shit you’ve ever heard?”



And it was! If I listen to that record now it still sort of is.

How would you describe your development as an artist in terms of interests and challenges, searching for a personal voice, as well as breakthroughs?

I knew I wanted to be around music from an early age. I was probably around 12 when I decided that, however, I didn’t really consider myself a musician until I completed my first solo album VAMP.



I had recorded music before that and had played in other projects, but I started seriously trying to learn about creating music and honing my writing skills when I stopped partying and started spending time with people who took music seriously, as opposed to … uh ... dudes with very little actual talent, who just liked to tell people they were in bands, because they convinced me they could ‘help me with my music career’ or whatever bullshit.

Meeting David (Ryder Prangley) and my producer Drew Richards was a breakthrough because they wanted me to work harder on developing my voice and have sort of stuck by me despite whatever insanity I've been going through in the process.

When two artists you admire sort of ‘parent’ you in that way because they feel like your art is important, and tell you they believe in you, it's hard to ignore it. I am extremely fortunate that they came into my life.

Tell me a bit about your sense of identity and how it influences both your preferences as a listener and your creativity as an artist, please.

My family history is full of these conflicting tangled parts. It’s long and involved but in short it all adds to my confusion when it comes to my identity. I also spent way too much time trying to figure out “who to be”, to serve different environments or groups of people throughout my life which didn't help, but I don't think that's uncommon.

Also, if I’m being honest - which I guess I will be; being severely bipolar and struggling with aspects of my mental health constantly, I never really know where I’m gonna be in terms of influences or creative process because I never know where I’m going to land when I wake up in the morning, so maybe my inability to understand myself is the biggest influence in that sense.

What, would you say, are the key ideas behind your approach to music and art?

In the past I used music and writing to process things, or as a kind of therapy, for a long time. I felt like if I could write about it, and then release it, or perform it to people, whatever it was that messed me up wouldn’t just be my “thing” to carry around.

Lately it's been more to record experiences and stories. I've been lucky enough to have some extremely memorable encounters with friends and my partner. The third album I’m working on writing is mostly about those escapades and recording them in a way I can remember them and come back to them when I miss people or places.

How would you describe your views on topics like originality and innovation versus perfection and timelessness in music? Are you interested in a “music of the future” or “continuing a tradition”?

I think both are vital to keeping music and art interesting. I definitely lean towards older music, older artists, films etc. but I'm always impressed when I hear someone doing something that feels new and exciting, even if it partly reminds me of something that came before it.

Over the course of your development, what have been your most important instruments and tools - and what are the most promising strategies for working with them?

I've recently learned moving is important for me in terms of inspiration. I need to be in new places and have new experiences. This mostly happens during travel.

I was traveling around America with my fiancé over the summer and ended up writing a stack of lyrics which are slowly turning into a third album.

I hate staying in one place for too long. I always write the best in hotels.

Take us through a day in your life, from a possible morning routine through to your work, please.

Currently I would chew glass for a routine that actually sticks because I need one. When I’m doing well it's usually structured around working out (boxing, weights, dancing).

I've tried to structure my writing but it hasn’t really worked. I’ll typically have bursts of productivity during good months, and then the depressive months are just a lot of watching Bewitched reruns or old cartoons and sleeping when the cat sleeps since I want to hang out with her, and it would be rude to wake her up.

Could you describe your creative process on the basis of a piece, live performance or album that's particularly dear to you, please?

The creative process behind my first album VAMP, and my upcoming record have been very different. With this next record, Runaway Bride, I was in the UK for the first half of the writing process. So I wrote as I normally have with my producer Drew and my writing partner David, but when I went to visit my parents, I got stuck abroad as the airports closed and I couldn’t come back.

I was essentially a teenager again. I was in my bedroom at my parents’ house playing guitar badly and trying to finish this second record. I ended up ordering just enough equipment to record some demos and send them over to the UK and had Drew work on his ideas there and send them back to me and it went on like that for about nine months.

When I finally got home and we listened to everything we had we were both pretty surprised that we managed to get an album together under those circumstances.

It wasn’t easy to make, but it forced me to learn more about the recording process and about constructing a full song myself. So Runaway Bride has been, and is, very dear to me, and I can’t wait to release it.

Listening can be both a solitary and a communal activity. Likewise, creating music can be private or collaborative. Can you talk about your preferences in this regard and how these constellations influence creative results?

I like to write lyrics on my own, but in order to turn them into songs I usually need to be working with another artist. As I mentioned before, I was stuck abroad because of quarantine during the writing of my second record and at that time I actually picked up my guitar and wrote a few of the songs, but that was mostly out of necessity.

I love playing, but I'm honestly not good at it. I can put ideas down to build a song around, but after that I need to collaborate with someone to really fine tune the piece.

That being said, I'm very particular about who I work with. I've worked with David for so long now I can say about five words regarding a song's subject matter and it's enough for him to write something around my lyrics. I’ve never had that ability with anyone else so far.

How do your work and your creativity relate to the world and what is the role of music in society?

I'm starting to wonder if my work does actually relate to this world we’re currently living in. I'm not sure it does with the way social media platforms have become vital to promoting art and music. I don’t really have a handle on all that or understand it if I'm honest.

I am lucky to have a group of people, from different places around the world, who want to hear what I'm working on. I'm pretty one on one with people who get in touch to say they like something I've worked on. It's always something I'm grateful for and this summer I actually went around America meeting people that I’d developed a connection with because they got in touch with me about some song I wrote with my old band or because they loved VAMP.
I mean, I met my fiancé because of my music.

I don't know about my work and the world or society in general, but I am forever grateful for the little cult that's come out of me putting my work out in the universe.

Art can be a way of dealing with the big topics in life: Life, loss, death, love, pain, and many more. In which way and on which occasions has music – both your own or that of others - contributed to your understanding of these questions?

I'd be straight up lying if I said I had an understanding of those questions. I don’t think I do.

Art has helped me get through some of those events. I think in the way that having something existing that held familiarity felt like group therapy without having to put on pants and you know, see people. Just knowing that someone went through the very same experience, and then created something out of it, and shared it so I could feel less alone while I try to process whatever it is has been life saving on more than one occasion.

How do you see the connection between music and science and what can these two fields reveal about each other?  

Firstly, I’m grateful for the dopamine. Always.

I guess like a lot of other artists I have been curious about how music scientifically affects our brains. People tell me I'm overly nostalgic about everything, so I guess I'm interested in why hearing a few notes of a familiar song, or someone singing lyrics to a song, can trigger our brains to a person or place.

I'm interested in why scent does the same thing, catching a really specific perfume and wanting to cry, or puke, or whatever.

Creativity can reach many different corners of our lives. Do you feel as though writing or performing a piece of music is inherently different from something like making a great cup of coffee? What do you express through music that you couldn't or wouldn't in more 'mundane' tasks?

I guess that depends on the piece of music? Or the cup of coffee.

Oddly I feel like a lot of my most heartfelt lyrics or poetry is about that sense of calm that comes with monotony I don’t often get to have and haven’t had for pretty much my entire adult life, so when I get glimpses of stability, I savour them. For me, there’s a lot of monotonous actions that go into songwriting itself, at least now.

If I really want to get a song right, I'm re-recording my vocal takes in different ways, a million times. When a song is close to finished, I listen to it over and over, through different speakers. Leaving it then coming back to it again … If I'm making little homemade video visuals, I'm listening to the different parts of the track and seeing where they fit.

Once that initial rush of getting the new idea out has passed, it's all about cleaning things up till they’re right for me. I guess that in itself is monotonous?

Music is vibration in the air, captured by our ear drums. From your perspective as a creator and listener, do you have an explanation how it able to transmit such diverse and potentially deep messages?

I can’t say I know why it does what it does to us, but I can say I’m fucking glad it does it, and I’m grateful I get to experience it. I don’t know that I’d be around if I hadn’t had access to it the way I have.