Queer producer Lara Jones shares 'Depressed RN' & announces upcoming EP via Sound Records
Divided is due out Sept 13th via Sound Records
Premiered on Mary Anne Hobbs BBC Radio 6 today!
Supported by:
DJ Mag, Electronic Sound, The Wire, BBC Radio 6, BBC Radio 1
London based experimental producer, composer and multi-instrumentalist Lara Jones announces her upcoming EP Divided set for release on Sept 13th which will be available digitally and on vinyl via her new label home Sound Records. The release is also supported by PRS Foundation’s Women Make Music.
Today Lara shares ‘Depressed RN’, her new single that comes with a confessional lyric and infectious funky groove – all highlighting the self-criticism that social media frequently engenders: those highs after a live performance, followed by crushing self-doubt. It’s also a comment on how bleak things feel with a backdrop of continuous doom-laden news cycles and the general sadness that pervades life in Britain and across the wider western world.
Lara on the single: “This track is about that ebb and flow we face as humans that I think can be heightened for creatives where we lean into these different states. Battling those highs and lows is something I’ve always been super conscious of and have to work hard to find a balance in."
Composed, produced and mixed by Lara in her small London flat, Lara returns with her most dance floor-driven EP to date, with high energy pulsating electronics and jazz harmonies that weave into electronic grime and a web of arpeggiated synths, basses and glitchy beats. Divided sees Lara find her voice, bringing a punk angst with Jones’ lyrics and vocals, complimented by her signature electronics as she experiments with her voice more than ever.
Jones’ forthcoming EP explores the duality of daily life – both personal, as a queer musician and parent, and political, in our current daunting climate – that’s frequently split between fighting the surface confidence of our outer selves and the nagging inner demons, injustices and chaos of the world in the 21st century.
Lara makes thrillingly disconcerting music that’s undergone an organic evolution across her previous EPs, with her latest set distilling her dizzying mix of accessible and avant-garde sounds with edgy, powerful production. From the haunting poignancy of her darkly ambient debut EP, Ensó, via the crunching industrial grime of Flow, with its flickering gritty textures, to the warm eroticism and enticing dance grooves of Fig, Lara Jones refuses to be boxed in by genres or gender definitions: queer love coexists with androgenous activism – tender feelings are set against a tough urban landscape.
She creates otherworldly sounds through an alchemical combination of effects and synths in Ableton Live. Cleverly weaving together, feedback, swirling distorted keys and ever-evolving soundscapes. It’s these qualities that she’s conjured up on this startling home-produced set as she pours her life and surroundings into these highly emotive tracks.
Lara feels societal divisions all the more keenly as a queer person in our extremely polarised times, finding her own way as an artist dealing with the highs and lows, ups and downs, light and darkness of everyday life. This manifests through these life-affirming energised songs that provide a soundtrack to unite and inspire others going through similar emotions.
Lara’s Divided EP is both playful and provocative, turning dance floor sounds into protest songs. Addressing subjects that affect us all – the highly polarised state of our politics as well as our conflicted inner and outer selves – Lara has created a sonic space that embraces this duality and gives voice to her own insecurities and anger at the state we find ourselves in, but also a desire for change, for a world that’s a little less divided.
Divided Tracklist
1. Binary
2. Lie
3. Divided
4. Depressed RN
5. Sad Sax Interlude
6. Look Remix
Lara Jones Online:
