Founded by Ryan Lott in 2007, Son Lux “works at the nexus of several rarely-overlapping Venn Diagrams” (Pitchfork). With the recent additions to the band of guitarist-composer Rafiq Bhatia and drummer Ian Chang, Son Lux is now a ferocious trio both live and on record. Bones (June 23, 2015) is the first album documenting this new formation, and it draws from the three members’ unique and omnivorous musical vernaculars.
From the start, Son Lux has operated as something akin to a sonic test kitchen. The band strives to question deeply held assumptions about how music is made and re-construct it from a molecular level. What began as a solo project for founder Ryan Lott expanded in 2014, thanks to a kinship with Ian Chang and Rafiq Bhatia too strong to ignore. The trio strengthened their chemistry and honed their collective intuition while creating, releasing, and touring five recordings, including LPs Bones (2015) and Brighter Wounds (2018). A carefully cultivated musical language rooted in curiosity and balancing opposites largely eschews genre and structural conventions. And yet, the band remains audibly indebted to iconoclastic artists in soul, hip-hop, and experimental improvisation who themselves carved new paths forward. Distilling these varied influences, Son Lux searches for equilibrium of raw emotional intimacy and meticulous electronic constructions. Their latest endeavor is Tomorrows, a long-format album to be released in three volumes over the course of a year.