Introducing #261 - Lucy Kruger & The Lost Boys
Let us introduce you to Lucy Kruger & The Lost Boys - who bring us a huge dose of ambientt art-pop noise from Berlin.
The group, fronted by South African born artist, Lucy Kruger, create music that is full of atmosphere and intensity. In April 2022 the band released, ‘Teen Tapes (for performing your stunts)’ - a follow up to their previous record ‘Transit Tapes (for women who move furniture around)’ (2021) - and the final in their series of tapes. The trilogy, which began with the introverted collection of lullabies, ‘Sleeping Tapes for Some Girls’ (2019), documents a closing in, or a closening, in an effort to let go. There is a relinquishing of control that happens throughout the course of the three records, in both sound and storytelling.
They took a moment to talk to us about their music and their new album ‘Heaving’.
Hey there Lucy Kruger & The Lost Boys - how are you? So your album is out now - how does it feel to have it out there in the world?
We’re very well, thank you. We’re on tour at the moment - which feels like a lovely way to celebrate an album release.
I’m glad the album is out there. It’s a strange one, I think, and I’m really not sure how people will receive or experience it, which is sort of nice. To be curious without too much expectation. I feel glad to have stretched into new territory for myself and the band.
It is called ‘Heaving’ - what is the meaning behind that?
Heaving is not a word I use particularly often in my day-to-day life but it came up in a few of these songs and when I looked at it on its own, it seemed to make sense as a feeling for the record. It has a visceral quality to it. Something physical, inevitable, pulsing. A bit disturbing but also, moving - in meaning and in feeling.
Where was it recorded? Any behind the scenes stories from the creative process you are happy to share with us?
Most of the skeletons of the recordings were done in my room and began as experiments with the voice. I wanted to try to use the voice not just as a storytelling device, but as a bit of a guttural instrument. I put down some quite basic groove elements and then improvised around that. Writing with a guitar means that you’re limited to what you can play, and what you can remember and repeat. A simple electronic loop and a small recording setup leave a lot of freedom to spill ideas and then piece them together. The band then slowly layered around those sketches which was a very interesting way to work. It’s lovely to see how much depth, nuance, and change those musical choices bring to the work. I kept a lot of the original vocal takes - trying to retain the seed of the songs, and the strangeness that makes them specific, and therefore more interesting. At least that was the hope.
What are the key themes and influences on the album?
I think a lot of it is trying to make sense of being a body in the world. It sounds big and a bit ridiculous, but I think it’s true. There is an attempt to come back to the deeply imperfect perfect physical ephemeral form of the body. The oozing growing secreting dying birthing breathing touching secluded body. Trying to explore, accept, understand, and perhaps revel in it. The voice, in this context, is understood as a part of that body, and the process of the album allowed a chance to experiment with it. To be in conversation with it. To celebrate strangeness and to confuse conditioning. At least these are some of the things I was thinking about in the process of writing, and recording, and which I hope in some ways made their way into the music.
If the album could be the soundtrack to any film - which one would it be and why?
Mm. Interesting thought. I’m having a difficult time trying to come up with something. I’m going to imagine that somebody turned Jenny Hval’s ‘Paradise Rot’ into a screenplay, which was reworked to take place in a small house in the Karoo desert in South Africa. All the furniture in the house is played by actual women. I’d like this album to be the score for that film. Perhaps it would need some rearranging, but it’s a nice, absurd thought.
Do you have a favorite lyric on the album - if so, which one and why?
Perhaps - ‘I vandalised a map and I buried it in song’
It’s interesting to write a song and then look back and attempt to figure out what exactly you meant by it all. I think this was a tiny moment of illumination for me about how one uses songs and symbols to draw others closer while still remaining largely hidden. The mess of meaning that wants connection but avoids clarity for fear of not finding it, or something like that.
Now the album is out there - what next?
Hopefully, we’ll be touring quite a bit this year. These songs were also written with a live show in mind. I wanted the chance to perform and play in a way that is less subdued than what the previous albums allowed. A bit of strength and conflict.
And then I think we'll always be working on the next record - so there is also that. Although I’m not as clear this time about what it will be. Heaving felt like a bit of a turn and I’m not sure where to from here, which is a bit intimidating but also exciting.
