“To be able to feel the big and small things that move inside of you. Thoughts, reflections, emotions, ideas. To be able to see all the colors, all the things that are before you.” Lapalux’s voice greets us amid the soft opening of the first part of his new single, “Total Reality, Total Chaos.” Lapalux, an English producer from Essex, gives us an experimental piece centered around tape loops he created and recorded over the past few years.
He says of the loops, “(They) weave in and out as you travel through different ‘rooms.’ I say rooms not in the literal sense but I imagine each loop has its own place in time and space. This is where the idea of this sound room comes from. Each room has its own feel, its own emotion, its own sense of place and setting. You pass through that room and open the door into the next.”
The single is two tracks, the first being almost 13 minutes long and the second about 16 minutes long. The idea of taking us through different rooms that Lapalux presents translates well in the songs. The first single feels like a sunrise at an underground rave, as you sleepily walk from room to room in this dark place where the sun can’t reach, watching strangers sleep and laugh, until you stumble outside and face the sun.
The second track begins and remains as an almost fleeting breath, but at about 11 minutes into the track the spoken word begins again in a quieter tone than the first track: “Peaceful sanctuary, where anything is possible, and whatever we find is enough.” Perhaps Lapalux gives this track as something to find, as he did with old and new loops. He takes the pressure off of creating something to only last a few minutes, and instead creates a sound that lasts longer and lingers, being enough as it is, in all of its simplicity.
Though the idea of being at an underground rave in the after hours is still far off in the distance, for now, we can use this single as a lullaby, sending us into dreams of sweaty bodies and dancing.
Daily Arts Writer Katy Trame can be reached at ktrame@umich.edu.