De Lux
New Single – ‘Oh Man The Future’-July 31
Watch The New Video Here
New Album- ‘Generation’ – Out Now
The Californian duo draw on Talking Heads and LCD Soundsystem with a dreamy summer breeze of a song Sunday Times Culture
A whooshing and squealing, tasty blend of Talking Heads-style post-punk and strutting disco Metro
Californians De Lux come complete with a louche David Byrne-esque vocalist who hits all the high notes NME
Intricate, witty, inventive dazzling The Guardian
A pair of art-rock, alt-dance sophisticates with magpie eyes and the technical skills to make it happens Q Magazine
De Lux have today debuted the video for new single ‘Oh Man The Future’ (out July 31st), the latest to be taken from new album Generation, out now through Innovative Leisure (Tropics, Classixx, BADBADNOTGOOD). The single is currently on the 6Music Playlist with support also from Radio 1 (Huw Stephens), and the attendant video (which premiered through LA Times) finds Sean Guerin and Isaac Franco’s frenzied approximation of a future dystopia vying against a meandering drive through Long Beach’s sun-dappled suburbs.
On their 2014 debut album Voyage, L.A duo De Lux learned how to take their influences and create a sound all their own— a synthesis of post-punk, disco, funk and synth wizardry that drew inspiration from the same combination of agitation and exhilaration that helped LCD Soundsystem and Talking Heads deliver their unique brand of danceable social commentary. Now that they’ve found their sound, De Lux have created a story to go with it on their new album Generation.
On Voyage, De Lux sounded every inch an emerging band of 1979 or 1982 as much as 2014, an aesthetic entirely informed by the meticulous tastes of Sean Guerin and Isaac Franzo. Encountering each other during High School in L.A., Isaac and Sean had both been independently finessing adventures in music since the age of 15. A teenage Isaac pored over the sources of hip-hop’s greatest samples via an elder DJ brother’s collection- all the while following a strict diet of classic and obscure disco/boogie tunes- whilst Sean was holed away recording & re-recording the songs he’d been writing since his early teens. Both were ultimately in pursuit of the groove, that moment where bass & beat align to hypnotic effect.
Once their debut was released, De Lux found themselves caught up in a whirlwind of touring- but they had to fight to find time to write. A work-in-progress song “It’s A Combination” was the tipping point, when Sean and Isaac realized they’d been making rough drafts for a year. They returned to their L.A. practice space with new instruments — like the little-known but sought-after synthesizer guitar beloved of King Crimson’s Adrian Belew — and new inspirations, chief among them punk performance artist Karen Finley, whose 1987 debut album Sean discovered at a Seattle record store. Her infamously uncensored lyrics made him realize there was more he could sing about, too: “You admire the ambition behind her saying whatever she wants,” he says.
Generation is a darker album than Voyage, heavy on urban anxiety and audaciously candid, too. Over its eleven songs, De Lux charts the distance between childhood and adulthood, nostalgia and aspiration, and dream and reality, all with unflinching autobiographical detail (and with a secret nod to the Pokémon theme, too). “When I write lyrics,” Sean says, “I try and be as specific as possible. We think about if someone listens to us in 30 years: ‘Oh, that’s what was going on at that time.’” The result is entirely unfiltered and fearlessly contemporary.
No Comments