Praise for 'Ruinism' & 'The End of Industry EP':
“With Ruinism, Lapalux has succeeded in achieving something genuinely unique”
- PopMatters, Best Electronic Albums of 2017
“a bold reinvention of Lapalux’s sound, and is undoubtedly his best work to date”
- All Music, Favorite Electronic Albums of 2017
“Howard’s attention to detail, now strikingly and undeniably apparent from start to finish.”
- Pitchfork
“bleakly beautiful and intriguingly brittle, in a way that Howard’s usual gauzy touch hasn’t allowed before”
- AV Club
“a sleek electronic-pop sheen, but beneath the veneer there was something more chaotic going on”
- Resident Advisor
“distorted vapors and bulky bounces that emit from Lapalux's hardware and stick in your head like fragments of a memorable dream”
- The FADER
Following the release of his third full-length album Ruinism in June 2017, the follow-up The End Of Industry EP just four months later, and an expansive European tour, Stuart Howard, aka British experimental electronic producer Lapalux today announces a rare North American Tour set for this April, marking his first multi-show trip stateside in two years, and the first opportunity for North American audiences to experience the music from the his critically acclaimed 2017 output live. Tour dates, flyer, and more information below.
Ruinism and The End Of Industry EP are both out now via Flying Lotus’ Brainfeeder imprint and are available to stream and purchase here and here respectively.
Lapalux NA Tour:
04/18 Denver, CO - Cervantes
04/19 Montreal, QB - Newspeak
04/20 Washington, DC - DC9
04/21 Miami, FL - Floyd
04/22 Tallahassee, FL - Club Down Under
04/24 Springfield MO - Outland Ballroom
04/25 Oakland CA - New Parish
04/26 Seattle WA - The Crocodile
04/27 Los Angeles, CA - Union
04/28 Brooklyn, NY - Elsewhere
Lapalux’s previous album Lustmore (2015) was partially inspired by the concept of hypnagogia, a suspension of consciousness occurring between wakefulness and sleep. Throughout Ruinism the British producer takes this exploration further, journeying onward to the more ominous limbo space between life and death. In this liminal space where the finite and infinite intermingle, Lapalux (aka Stuart Howard) sounds more at home than ever. Ruinism is all sonic wreckage and rubble created using only hardware and real instruments. The sound simultaneously destroys and redeems itself across a tight and formidable forty-eight minutes.
“‘Ruinism’ is a made-up term I use to describe the way in which blended sound palettes and inspirations interact with one another to form this album,” Lapalux explained of his process. “I would record synths and drum hits and re-sample, re-pitch, twist and blend the sound until it was ‘ruined’ and then salvage it again in an attempt to make something coherent.”
Following the release of Ruinism in June, Lapalux quickly returned with new music in the shape of The End of Industry EP - the premise of this EP was to make something that resembled the current automated world we’re now living in. “Computerised machines are now taking over a vast majority of industrial tasks and this EP is a window into that transitioning world,” he elaborated.
The End Of Industry EP’s sonic palette comes from, in part, self-modulating and self-generative modular patches and from played in, recorded motifs and instrumentation as well as heavy editing. “Having this human touch and adding a human aesthetic shows that human interaction is still necessary in the process of creation and manipulation. This EP is my take on the idea of the Human vs the Machine.”