Lapalux stands out as one of the more accessible producers on Flying Lotus’s Brainfeeder label, making music that skews closer to pop than much of the hybridized production the label is known for. The Essex native, born Stuart Howard, showed himself to be a savvy deconstructionist on a pair of 2012 EPs. He took the raw ingredients of offbeat pop songs--melodic backbone, diaphonous vocals, clattering drumlines-- and shuffled them to create IDM tracks that felt inventive and accessible. He's using similar tricks on his debut album Nostalchic, while moving from deconstructed pop to a more relaxed brand of R&B and soul, both genres that complement Howard's consistent interest in texture.
On Lapalux’s first two Brainfeeder projects, When You’re Gone and Some Other Time, you could hear the 25-year old producer cautiously experimenting with new ideas, working within traditional structures even as he experimented with outré sounds. He’s more confident on Nostalchic, walking the line between chaos and stability to create a sound that resembles a jittery, discombobulated version of chillwave. Brainfeeder's Hip-Hop Beats N' Bass blueprint is still present, but it isn't the focus on the album. Instead, on tracks like the back-to-back standouts "Flower" and "Swallowing Smoke", Howard's working with a hundred little slivers of the same core melody, rearranging them again and again by attaching them to different portions of the beat until, by the end of the song, they fit together smoothly. It's sampling as fine art-- as precise and painstaking as a mosaic.
With all these separate elements floating around, it's possible for things to get a little too messy. "Kelly Brook" is muddled and unpleasant, shot through with sounds that don't make sense with each other. It's as if the pieces of several different songs were never properly separated and it’s one of the few moments on the album where Howard doesn’t appear to be in total control.
Vocalists appear throughout Nostalchic, serving as amplified versions of their sampled counterparts from the guest-free tracks. Though Jenna Andrews has a strong showing on the languorous “One Thing” and Kerry Leatham’s distorted voice adds depth to the standout “Without You”, Lapalux is actually his own most reliable performer. On “Walking Words” he's familiar enough with the beat to insert what sounds like his own murmurs and distortion directly into the spaces available and his vocal ends up mimicking the track's motion perfectly.
With a name like Nostalchic, you might assume that Howard is trying to conjure something from the past, to produce the sonic equivalent of immaculate vintage clothing. The sentiments expressed on the album are in keeping with that concept: the lyrics, where they exist, tend to keep things simple with messages like “Do you want to dance?” and “I want to make love.” But, keeping solidly in line with the Brainfeeder tradition, Nostalchic is a forward-looking album, warm and comfortable but never obvious.
