If you can play me a twenty six track album where there's more than four good songs, I'll give you a million quid.
Good evening, everyone, wherever you're streaming this new episode of Midnight Chats, welcome and thank you for listening. I'm Greg and this is episode ninety of the podcast. Tonight's episode was recorded a couple of months ago. It was mid January when Ellie Jackson, obviously better known as LaRue, kindly
invited me to her house in South London. As you can hear, LaRue was a little bummed up that day, but given she wasn't feeling one hundred percent, she was very hospitable and her place was also amazing, a house as vibrant, colorful and full of amazing objects as you would expect from Larux. For example, there's a giant gold painted palm tree in her living room that was a stage prop from one of her Glastonbury Festival performances a few years ago.
We weren't alone.
Kat Calypso was weaving in and out of our feet as we had this conversation, and downstairs was the kitchen table where she wrote her latest album, Supervision, which was her first in six years and that came out in February, so do make sure you're go and.
Check that out.
As for the chat, it was fascinating to hear her reflections on those early experiences of LaRue's exploding popularity. She was twenty one years old, new to the industry when In for the Kill and Bulletproof became huge hits. You might remember she won a Grammy around that same time
as well. Then a few years on and the release of her second album, Trouble in Paradise in twenty fourteen, was a period marred by breakups and fractures of various different kinds, and then a little later on the life changing emotional realization or breakdown, whatever you want to call it, which she describes in visceral detail that led to a moment of clarity and the beginning of this brand new era for Laru. Now, Ellie is a lot of fun to hang out with. Sweary and opinionated and funny and
honest and refreshingly no bullshit. I felt pretty compelled by everything she had to say listening back to it. I hope you do too. So let's get into it. This is Midnight Chat's episode ninety with laru one final mention, as everyone is Star Clearware right now. These are uncertain times for many people and many independent businesses, ourselves included. And you've heard me say this before, but alongside this podcast,
we also make a music magazine, Loud and Quiet. We've recently opened an online store at Loud and Quiet dot com. Do take a look in there. Maybe there's something you want to buy, including some rare archive issues of the magazine that we've put up for sale. It helps support what we do, including making this podcas Larie, welcome to Midnight Chats.
Thanks for coming on not at all, thank you for having.
Me, and thanks for letting us come to your house as well, because this is actually the place where you made Supervision, the album that you released recently, So thanks for letting us do it here. You just give me a little bit of a tour so people can have a bit of an idea. You made that album in the studio that you've built in the kitchen come basement of your of your of your house.
Basically, yeah, I hadn't actually, as I was saying, I hadn't actually sort of built it yet then because I realized it was the best place for me to make music was in my own environment. I really just wanted to keep it that way and I felt most comfortable there, so I then built the studio there. But actually I made supervision on the kitchen table, just on a laptop really and like with a keyboard and bass and guitar.
How long have you been in this area? Have you always been South London? Is this just like you've been here long time?
My parents live about five roads away and I grew up five roads away. I was born tech Conniclarly eat Peckham. But then when I was one we moved tourn Hill, but I say Brixton because nobody knows what hearn Hill is and it's mildly cooler.
In terms of the beginnings of twenty twenty, you were one of the first people that actually saw at the beginning of twenty twenty because I was at home with a few of the people and we flicked on the TV and they were doing Jiles holland Who to Nanny. What was the experience like of doing that?
It was actually quite a stressful day, but just because my keyboard player fell ill that day and we didn't know where she was, so it was quite stressful day. So we had a stand in almost an entirely stand in band for that day. Because it's also really last minute, Like they don't tell you weeks in advance. They tell you like four days in advance. And I'm not rehearsed obviously anything for tours. So it was kind of like, uh, this is not ideal, but we obviously really wanted to
make it work, and we did. We did make it work. But yeah, it was good in the end. It was really good in the end. And we've never actually done Jiles Holland atoll before, which seems kind of mad. We have been asked once or twice to think, but I think I've been ill once, so it was nice to finally do it.
Yeah, did you always consider doing something like that, or doing the hutin any specifically as a bit of a rite of passage because it is a famous thing to do. It's maybe a bit of a sort of tick list thing, isn't it because New Year's Eve, everybody thinks what's on TV? It's Jules Holland's.
Yeah, I mean, it's definitely a right of passage. I think I think to not beyond Jules Holland when you've had you know, any kind of substantial music career seems a bit weird. And also I think as you get older, the likelihood of you going out on New Year's is so slim everybody, even though they don't really want to admit it. Pretty much most people do just stay in and watch Jills Holland and drink wine and then go to bed. Let's be honest.
I hate to break into anybody who still thinks this, but like Jules Holand's doesn't actually take place live on New Year's Eve, so it's.
Quite shocking to a lot of people, like as if we're all going to give up our New Year's to go to Maidstone.
I think all of the people in that room would be even drunker if it actually was taking place like it was.
Actually genuinely quite drunk, though I was mildly drunk by the time I'd gone on stage, just because you have to wait about three hours, so it's mainly bored and drinking. But I mean, yeah, maybe you've seen from the internet. I don't know. Ainsley Harriet is quite jolly and everyone was genuinely quite drunk, like all the audience members in the corners of the room. You are really quite drunk.
I mean, I love how random Chilses Hollins who to Nanny Is? We were watching and there's obviously yourself, like Stormsy was on there.
Like it doesn't fit, does it. It's like more it's not like they've curated.
It is always really just kind of the guests selection is always a bit wilder than that your average episode Hollands.
And even your average episode is quite random.
And it was going from some New Year's Eve. It was obviously you played, but then there was like storm Z.
Rick Astley, Stereophonics.
You're never going to find yourself in a room with those people again, hopefully. And I love how they do those segments where oh, Mikayla Strachan was there, Yes, she was, yeah, And I was like, I had all about Mikayla Strachen since she presented the really wild show.
I know, right, that was quite weird. That woman from Space was there as well, which was.
Quite Cool's amazing, Jessica. I forget what I was saying.
Yeah, she kept pointing at my outfit and I kept pointing at her shoes. She had amazing shoes.
On What was the experience of actually performing like on Jills Holland.
It's weird. I think it didn't help that I was having a bit of a strange day, do you know what I mean? Because my keeble playing my keyble players like my best friend as well, So I was actually quite worried. It was fine. I mean, TV's always weird. I think, if people are honest, nobody really enjoys doing TV. But it's really important for obvious reasons. But I think as an artist and as a performer, it's a quite
a stale environment to perform in. And it's also it's very much on que It's very rare and weird to perform one song and then stop. You know, it's like you amp yourself up, you get vibed up to do something and then it's like, okay, now just be silent, and then we're going to go over here. It's just quite odd, you know, it's not very realistic. But it's fine, you know, it is what it is. It was absolutely fine. It was just nice to sing the tunes.
Really, was there anything else that you take away from the experience of doing it? And so you post a photo of you and Stormsy on New Year's Day, like obviously taken when you recorded it, But you know, was there anything where you're like, oh that, that was a pretty cool element of being there and doing that.
Yeah, it was nice to meet him. I think he's a fellow South Londoner as well, so we spoke about that for a little bit. He actually sort of ran up to me halfway through the evening and said, oh my god, I didn't realize it was you. And I sort of thought, I'm not really sure how you could not realize it was me, but I'm wearing a pink
and green petrol outfit. But never mind. But then, yeah, we had a really nice chat and he was like, oh, I sampled you on my first EP or mixtape or whatever, and then we had a bit of a chat and he said he was a big fan and stuff like that, so that's a really nice compliment. Yeah, it's really nice to meet him. He's a really nice guy. He's like the tallest guy I've ever met, though.
So I've got to ask on actual New Yars Eve, did you watch it?
You didn't put it on?
I didn't. I went round to Dan Carey's house, who I ended up recording co producing the end of the record with, and we had dinner, but his family were all quite ill. And then I was just in the middle of talking to him saying something. I was talking to him and his wife, and he just was looking at me really disapprovingly, and I thought, well, am I saying that's so awful? And then he just said, I think I need to go and be sick. I met up with some friends after that for like an hour
or so, and then I just went to bed. I never watched myself back. It's not it's not a good idea. I don't read interviews, I don't watch myself back. I don't listen to myself. It's just how to hate yourself in three easy steps. You know, i'd really rather not.
Did you do that in the early days? Did you kind of learn a lesson of doing that or have you always faut that way? Yeah?
I learned my lass in the hard way. It's just best. You know, you'll never see yourself the way other people see you. Ever, you'll never hear yourself to other people hear you. I'm a massive perfectionist anyway, So if I watch something and everybody else says it's amazing, it doesn't make any difference, you know, it just makes zero difference, I'll be like, oh, but then I looked a bit weird when I looked over to the left, and I
looked uncomfortable. It's like you know yourself too well. It's like your mom knows you too well, Like your mom will always know if you're nervous, even if nobody else does. You know. It's like it's just everything's very transparent, and I think you just don't need to You don't need to scrutinize yourself to that degree. Like if everybody says it's good, just accept it and move on. You know, you did the best you could. You can't rewind and
do it again either. It's not like you can go back, so you might as well just move on.
I just want to ask a little bit about the kind of early years when I mean I came to see LaRue when you first started out and like we're
playing shows. I think the Enemy Radar at All was maybe the first time I saw you, which I think was around sort of two thousand and nine ten something like that, and it just occurred to me, and the run up to like coming to chat to you today, I was like that whole experience of how everything went around the first album you were in your really early twenties, and it kind of thrust into this much bigger world of kind of like obviously the popularity that came in
the UK, but then you know, off to the States you went eighteen months later on a Grammy. When you think about that time now, was it as head spinning as I kind of imagine for somebody who was, you know, in your early twenties.
Yeah, it was really odd. Whilst I knew that, like Bulletproof was going to be big and we all knew that, and management had said it was going to be big, and the labeler said it was going to be big, it's hard to comprehend what that kind of means for you as an individual. So you might be kind of like, oh, wow, brilliant, I might be number one, or you know, I might sol as a record. You know, I have no problem with that, but there's a lot of other stuff that
comes with it. I'm experiencing some of it now, even though I'm not having a hit currently necessarily a sun you don't you can't really have a hit hit in the same way that you could then anyway, not for an artist like myself, but just the workload it's so intense for a twenty one year old. I found myself becoming very, very very scared. Mainly I think I wasn't ready. I was ready for success, but I wasn't ready for the amount of pressure. So I don't mind, you know,
millions of people knowing my song. I don't think anyone will complaining about that. But and fame wasn't really that much of an issue. It wasn't like I was, you know, I didn't feel like I had any privacy or I was getting stopped in the street. That wasn't an issue. It wasn't that. It was just the house full on. Everything was you know, the traveling and like I said, I haven't been doing it for five years now and
it's all taken me slightly by surprise. But it was just being that young, not really knowing yourself and your limitations, and also not really being able to communicate them. And even if you do, you're kind of just like a twenty one year old girl who's like moaning in inverted comments. Do you know what I mean? It's like you don't really get listened to, you don't get taken that seriously.
I don't think you had the right people around me at that time either, So I think whilst I was like, wow, I never expected this, This is incredible, it's also really really really hard to know how to deal with it. Like there's no Millions of people have said there really is no instruction booklet, and there's there's nothing I'd even say to myself. Now if I looked back, I wouldn't even go, oh, you could do this better, or you
could do that, or why didn't you try that? You know, because also you're twenty one, you would have first of all, you would have said, fuck off, I know what I'm doing. And second of all, you can only know that stuff later on. You can't. You can't just get it right then, you know, you have to get it wrong to get it right. It wasn't that sort of amazing time that I look back on, But it also just feels like it went in a heartbeat. It went in a flash, and I didn't get time to enjoy it.
You know what I mean, Like if you, I mean, I don't know if you is your Grammy Award around here somewhere.
Yeah, it's upstairs somewhere.
Yeah, Because it was happening so like fleetly and so like fast paced that in a way. To the outside, you're thinking, oh, well, it must have been absolutely incredible going to the Grammys and having your weekend there and then but you were.
Which that was actually amazing. I mean, that really was amazing.
But why was that experience so memorable for you? Well, I mean apart from the obvious of going to the winning a Grammy, but like, tell me a bit about that weekend.
First of all, I was just in shock. I think it means a lot less to me now than it did then because I realized that unless you're happy, it doesn't matter what award you're given by somebody else. But at the time, obviously I remember the my American A and R man texting me. I woke up at like seven o'clock in the morning one morning around this time of year, and he said, you've been nominated and I was like for what, And he's like, for the Grammys,
and I was like, what were you talking about. You know when you wake up to a text message and you think I've not read that right, I've read that wrong. I mean, just have a cup of tea and I'll just wake up and I'll read it again, and then I won't read that, and I still read that, and I thought, that's this can't this must be an error, like, you know, literally, this must be an error. And I called him and I was like, what do you mean, I don't get this. I said, You've been nominated for
a Grammy. Obviously, now I know how these awards harmonies work. So it's not about me doing myself down or the Grammy down, or taking anything away from myself or saying it doesn't mean anything to me. But you know, I had a huge record label that were pushing for that, pushing for that award, and obviously they pushed really hard and that they got what they wanted, and I kind of got what I wanted, but I never really even knew I wanted it. I'd never even dreamt of having
a Grammar. I wouldn't have even dreamt to dream that big, do you know what I mean? I would have It would have scared me to even think about dreaming that big. So I think it was mainly just severe shock. And as you can see, when I received the award, I was like, what the fuck is going on? I mean,
I was just basically hyperventilating. I don't know, I don't know what to do with myself because to me, even though that was more like the shmammis, you know they call it there where you're not allowed in the main you're not actually allowed in the main Grammy arena, So you're not actually in the main Staples Center bit. You're in like another bit with like fold out chairs and
you get your Clipso get out of the draw. Please shut that door because there's treats in there, and then she'll just try and get.
In there.
The sideboard there, or.
You can get the treats out and give them to her, or she'll just bug you for the whole time.
Is she angry or is she is she she's.
Not angry, she doesn't hate you, she really likes you, or she wouldn't be anywhere near you, I promise.
Yeah, it was that kind of it's in like a side room and it takes place that before it's because the Grammys lasts about seven hours.
Yeah, I mean that was one sort of good thing about it was that I didn't have to sit through this seven hour ceremony. But at the same time, sorry, the cats really amusing me. But at the same time, you're kind of like, oh, I really wish I was in the main Grammys and I'm not I'm in this room with fold out chairs with no windows, which is kind of interesting, but then near they call your name, and I didn't really know what to do with myself.
And also, I think somebody who grew up in the nineties where you're watching MTV and you'd see like MTV Cribs or whatever. There'd be like huge, huge rappers and like Mariah Carey and people like that, you know, was shoving off their Grammys and cabinets and stuff, and you just don't ever comprehend that it could even happen to a really a British person, because I was just like, what am I even allowed to win a Grammy? I didn't really get it, do you know what I mean?
I thought you had to be American for starters. I didn't really know much about the Grammys. And second of all, I just thought, I can't understand how an album with reflections are protection on it is getting it. I just didn't make any sense to me, and it sort of still doesn't now, you know. I look at it upstairs and it's just a bit of a joke.
Sticking with the same period, Doctor Dre sampled the track of yours, and then it was going to be the Detox, wasn't it, which never materialized.
Got CD of it.
I was going to say, what, Yeah, did it ever materialize?
No, I don't know what happened. Apparently apparently other weird sorry, but apparently the Game and Doctor Dre were hanging out watching Oh god.
What was it?
Yes, they were watching Entourage and In for the Kill was on it, and they both apparently were like what is this? Decided to sample it, and then I was playing something like V Festival or something awful, and my manager, thank god, that doesn't exist anymore. It doesn't, does it?
No?
Thank god? And my manager said, oh, I've got this CD of Doctor Dre and the Game and in physicill Do you want to listen to it in my car? I was like yes, So he went into his car and we listened to it, and it had like properly of Universal recordings like all over it, like every three seconds, so you almost couldn't hear the track. It's really funny. It's like watermarking to the extreme. Yeah, it was really funny, so you could kind of hear it, and you kind
of couldn't. I mean, not really a lot happened in it, it was basically just like it was basically just I don't really remember it. It was, you know, but it was just like, this is fucking cool. It had like good beats obviously, but yeah, I have no idea what happened with that. God knows.
God knows might make its way onto the internet.
He never knows.
So if we fast forward a little bit too sort of troubling Paradise era, from what I've kind of read and the stuff that you said so far, like it sounded like that was a period that was kind of fraught with lots of difficult relationships personal and professional, and perhaps like after that you could just needed to get back here and get away from that. I don't know, like I've been putting that in the right terms, Like.
I don't think I was thinking much. Really, I don't think I was really in control of my career at that point. Now that I am so sort of in control of my career, I think I realize now how much I really wasn't then, you know, I think it's much more obvious to me now at the time, I'm
trying to think how I felt. I mean, I'd come out of a lot of voice problems, and that was like my main concern, So I didn't really have a lot of focus on other things because I was sort of just so worried about my anxiety all the time. And I think, you know, so many people are anxious now that most people understand this. I think it's just all you think about is not being anxious. You don't really think about anything else, and that's kind of all I thought about. And then obviously I did want to
make another record. I wanted to get another record out there, but I'd also sort of slightly entangled myself in another sort of relationship. By getting out of one, I'd sort of entered into another one. And I don't think I realized how obviously unhealthy that was for me personally as a creative until twenty seventeen, when I ditched the album I ditched and started making this one. I think it's unfortunate that sometimes it takes so long to learn a
lesson that it really is unfortunate. I would really have like there not to be such large lapses of time in my career so far, but there's also nothing I can do about it, because you only learn as quickly as you learn, and I'm really grateful that I've learned those lessons now and now I've made this record. But I think I just felt a bit in the middle of everything, in a bit, probably a bit lost, but not very aware of my situation, because otherwise I would
have done a lot more about it. Yeah, I would have been more proactive. And I think I was just slightly in a backseat in my life. If I'm honest with you, I think I was letting other people not other people, but no one really take the reins. But I certainly wasn't taking the reins. I knew that I had to stop working with my record label because that had really come to a bitter end. They were kind of quite rightly as well. They were really fed up
with me by that point. You know. They were like, you've spent hundreds and hundreds of thousands of pounds making a record that you won't let us listen to or have any saying, like, you're going to get annoyed. Do you know what I mean? You are going to get annoyed.
But I was really trying to put push back. I was so terrified of being turned into a crap pop artist, you know, into just somebody that gets sent to writing sessions and you know, has to sound like the last thing that was in the top ten and all the rest of it. I was just I think I was really overly scared about it, because obviously that wasn't going to happen. I don't think that was ever going to
happen to LaRue. It just wasn't going to happen. But I was still terrified of it to the point where where I kind of pushed everyone away to a great extent and didn't really allow them back in. My world kind of got smaller and smaller, and they got more and more annoyed, quite rightly, and I hated them more and more because we just never got on. We never
agreed about anything. You know. Their answer to all the problems with Traveling Paradise Is promotion was like, get such and such a DJ to remix the track, you know, to get more plays and sales and stuff, and that, obviously, I just led to a lot of arguments and a lot of shouting, I'm not fucking doing that, etc.
Etc.
How can you turn this down, yoursel fish, bitch rohrah. You know, those sorts of conversations were going on behind closed doors all got quite unpleasant after a while, and I think in the end, actually the best thing for everybody involved was just to not work with me anymore. And they sent me a letter. I received it on like the first of January twenty fifteen, just saying you know, you're no longer with Universal Records, and I was very
very happy. I called my parents and I sent them out and they were like, oh, thank God for that. So it was actually a really good day. It was the right thing that happened. And then I realized I needed to move away from my management as well, So there was just a lot of it wasn't actually all bad. It sounds like it's really really bad, but it wasn't.
It was actually all the right moves. And I just needed to get away from everything that had happened in the last five or six years and the first and second record, and needed to build new relationships with myself and with everybody else. I needed to go and find new working partners, which actually it took me a really
long time to find. I think even if I'd have made this record sooner, it wouldn't have made that much different different so at the time that it came out, because I still needed to find the right management team. I still needed to find the right record label set up for me. And actually, that stuff doesn't happen overnight. It's taken years.
Speaking specifically about the music, was there almost a moment that you can pinpoint where as you just mentioned you've got an album's worth material to follow up to Trouble in Paradise ready, and then you're like, no, just doesn't feel right and effectively kind of like scrap that repurge next, I'm gonna I'm gonna start again. Was it almost in Is it like a memorable instant that that happened.
Okay, it happened overnight. That was the only quick thing that's ever happened to me. Everything else like the years. This was literally overnight. I was on holiday with my ex partner and we were just walking down to the beach, down to this like tiny, tiny beach. There's nobody there. We were walking down this little gravel path and I just remember, I don't really know what said it off.
Actually I do know what said it off. I was talking about the person that i'd been in the studio with, and I realized that I was I'd sort of like I just let them in way too much, in loads of ways, and I realized that I wasn't really acting for myself anymore.
I didn't feel really present in those songs, like you didn't feel always as.
Yeah, it didn't, it didn't. It felt like it was going in another direction, like it almost felt like another band or something. And I think I'd been telling myself because of my fears of being overly possessive or being greedy, because I think everybody has those fears, and especially as somebody doing this job, it's very easy to make somebody scared of basically being a cunt, do you know what
I mean? And I'm so scared of being a cunt all the time that I think sometimes actually I allow things to happen to me that are really not okay because I'm so worried about the way affecting somebody else. I realized that I had gone down that path way too far, and I wasn't happy actually with where I was artistically. You know, it's not that the music was bad or anything like that. It's not like I thought, God, there music shit. It wasn't that. It was just what
am I doing? Why am I doing this? Why am I allowing this set up to continue when I'm not happy with it, And why am I talking about things as if I'm happy with them when I'm clearly not happy with them. And when you're talking to your partner, I think sometimes things become quite stark. I was just listening to myself and I could hear myself sort of saying things I didn't even believe in, and I was like, I don't even believe that, but I'm saying it like
I believe it. And I thought, who's in my head? And why are they there? You know? And I basically I just literally instantly collapsed and I had a panic attack, which I hadn't had for years. So that freaked me out. And we were just sat crouched on the floor trying to calm me down, and you know, she was like, what was wrong? Why is it so bad? Why are you so unhappy? What's going on? I don't get it.
Where's this comas has come from? Nowhere? Because there's no warning to this at all, And I just said, I don't know. I just I think I'm deeply, deeply unhappy and I haven't realized until right this second, and I'm not happy with what I'm doing I'm not happy with the setup. I'm not happy with the amount of time it's taking and has taken, and it's not even finished yet, and you know, I'm not happy with where the studio
is or how it's set. I just suddenly I realized all this stuff, and I was just it just was like puking. And then I went and made a lot of phone calls. I don't think we went to the beach that Yeah, we didn't get an ice cream. After that, we went. I think we went back to the villa and I had a bit of a debrief with some family members and some friends and stuff, and just decided to make a big change.
You know what's great about hearing that and taking like all the positives from that is that that moment happened. Yeah, you didn't kind of write it off as just sort of like like a kind of just moment of upset and just kind of be like, Okay, no, we'll just get back to it, it'll be fine.
No, it was really bad.
Everything that you've built in the last few years came from that moment, and you actually, in that moment, in the panic, collected your thoughts about what you're going to do.
Yeah, and I even had to kind of argue because I remember I remember calling my mum and she was like, no, you're not doing that. You are not doing that. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, you're stressing me out. Now. She was like, you can't be saying this to me after three years. You cannot be telling me you're about to ditch this whole project. You can't be. And at the time, actually I thought I was going to be able to take some songs and write some new songs and take some bits and
bobs that I'd done. But at the time it's just me trying to, I think, be just trying to salvage what I could. But actually that wouldn't have even been a good idea. It would have been a mess of an album because it would have been coming from two different places and it was also just a bit unrealistic and you know, just unlikely. But I think at the time that that was the way I was sort of making it okay. In my head, was like, well, it's not all wasted, you know, I can use this and
I can use this and blah blah blah. But even then, you know, my parents were like, are you really sure about this. Are you not just having a bit of a panic, you know, if you just had a panic attack and you just need to calm down, and are you going to change your mind tomorrow? And do you need to sleep on it? I was like, I don't need to sleep on this. I really really don't. I never really felt anything so strongly in my life. I remember even calling my lawyer in my accountant like within
hours and saying, change the whole setup I have. This has to stop now. I realize what I'm doing and it's really it's really wrong, and we and we have to stop it now.
Let's bring ourselves up to the current day, so to speak. On reflection of that, that was the starting point of basically a new chapter where he wrote this collection of new songs that's formed supervision, that you recorded in your kitchen, and then you've built a studio at home. It's a sort of new era. Really, all of the stuff that
we've just talked about to this point. Does it feel like the experience of going through all that has actually giving you some greater clarity than you've ever had before. Do you feel like a greater confidence, like a more control in what you're doing.
Yeah, totally. I feel like I'm starting my career again, but from the place I always needed to start it from. Mentally, at least, I could never start my career again, but I can. I can do things in the way that I want to do them. And it was also interesting because actually, even on that day when I had all those realizations whatever you want to call them, I went through some voice notes. Like the next day I kept I had loads of voice notes from the album we
were making. It's actually overly extensive. When I look back, it was quite strange. I've got them still now. You think you can actually see how unhealthy the album was by how much thinking there was going on. It was way too much. It was like way too many harmony options, way too many all sorts of things. It was just too much. Like it was like no decisions were being made. It was just options, options, options, options, which is never
a good sign. And I but I went back in between all those voice notes, and I'd suddenly found realized that I'd found, you know, the voice note for twenty first Century, a voice note for do You Feel, a voice note for some other track that actually didn't end
up on the album in the end. But I already had like a couple of the ideas that formed this album, and I think the correct part of me, the right part of me, had sort of already already sort of been thinking that quite a long time before I made that decision, and then when I started doing it, it's all just felt so right since and I never would
have had the confidence when I was younger. But at the same time, even when I was making the record with Ben, I remember there being uncomfortable conversations with both of us about whether it was a solo project or whether it wasn't, and me backing down in the end and feeling bad because you know, we'd co written so many of the you know, most of the songs and all the songs really, but it's just because you co
write songs doesn't mean you're in a band. You know, Otherwise every single pop artist out there would be in a band, do you know what I mean? But I think again, it's slight, even though I'm mouthy and all the rest of it, actually backing down quite a lot in lots of areas that I wasn't happy with, and I just won't do it anymore. And I won't be called a bitch for it. I won't. I won't be called, you know, greedy, I won't be called anything else. And if you think that, you can fuck off right out
of my life. To be honest, I really can't be asked with that narrative anymore. It's just not true. It's an easy way for people to manipulate you, to make you feel bad about the person that you are, but it just isn't true. I know what I'm doing, I know why I'm doing it, I am the best person to sort of do it. It doesn't mean I have to take over everything and I'm suddenly going to become like Terence strength Derby, you know, or anything like that.
It's not like that where I'm delusional and I think I know best and that's it and you can all fuck off. But at the same time, nobody else knows how to make LARU records apart from me, you know, like, I've never seen anyone else make one. If they go and make one and prove me wrong, you know, fair enough, but so far it's not happened.
The result is a record supervision that is really concise. It's eight tracks, isn't it, And it's just it does feel like.
One actually said, it is more of an EP I nearly punched it.
I mean it feels like decisive. It feels decisive.
It was very decisive. Actually it's quite direct.
I think, yeah, it is.
It is.
And it's also like kind of forty odd minutes long?
Is it?
And I think it's like forty eight minutes or something.
Were you ever attempted to make it longer? Were there much more material or was it? Was? It just like, no, that's it, that's this. I've made this decision. It is decisive. This is the eight tracks that make the new album.
There was like one other track floating around that was like half finished, which I will actually finish. But it felt a bit sort of too negative. It was about this area and about how it's changed. And it was called people around here or people or something. I can't remember what it was called. I really like it. I had a really good melody. It was like mildly scathing, and I just felt like it doesn't belong on this album about balance and new bound happiness. Do you know
what I mean? Just doesn't make sense. Dan agreed. You know, when I played it to him, he was like, I think it's a really good song, but I just don't feel like it's part of this body of work. And we also did There was also a cover of a track by this band I keep forgetting their name, done it for two years. It's really annoying. Oh wow, that's really bad. There's a cover called the Sun by a sixties band. It's going to really annoy me that I can't remember them, and it's called the Sun. It's like
a really weird track. It just had this really good riff at the beginning of it that I thought sounded
like a riff from a hip hop song. And originally I was going to sample the riff and then kind of write a song off the back of that, but then actually me and Dan started sort of playing it together in our sort of dub style, because we have this other thing that we do together that's this sort of like mini sort of dub band which we're sort of working on behind the scenes, and when we played together, it just instantly just sounds like some weird, little squelchy
dub project. And we started sort of playing that together and it just came out in about an hour. So we just played it once down made, you know, made a little beat, did guitar and bassed together and you know, and I sang over it and blah blah blah, it's really cool and I will put it out. I'm actually planning on doing a dub version of Supervision, But again that just was like, why would I put a cover
on this album? Why would a dub track? It's quite authentically dub as well, like it's it's less electronic, it's blah blah blah, and I just thought it's just gonna make it messy and less concise. So there was kind of like two other tracks flirting around, but I don't believe they were ever ever meant to belong on this record. They were just they just happened because I wanted them to happen. But I didn't mean that they should be on this record personally as well, just from a kind
of creative choice place. I just don't like long albums. I hate to say it, but I really genuine this is really genuinely feel like when I see a track with seventeen albums, I think, you fucking wanker who wants to fucking listen to one person for like an hour and forty five minutes or whatever. I think it's really weird, just personally, after like forty five minutes an hour, I'm so done, even with my favorite artists. I just don't
think you need any longer. I know that there's this whole thing with algorithms now and night Spotify and the more tracks you have. I just I can't play to that game. I cannot play that game. An album should be right because it's right, because it's creatively right, and nothing else should be thought about in that process. The songs sit together really nicely. They're all coming from the same place at the same time in my life when I felt the same, and that's what an album should be.
It's a diary from that time, and therefore it's the correct length in my eyes.
It does fill me with a little bit of dread when I see like a twenty six track mixtape and I just think, I'm not sure the time is right for this.
What is that? It's weird? But you're right.
I don't know whether it has been the rise of that type of thing has just because of the streaming generation, or that that I must play a part in it. But still I ALWASO think it's this idea.
That fans want more and more.
Yeah, and for some artists. They just they're just ready to know. They're happy to give everything. You know, this is these are the twenty six tracks that I've made in the last twelve months to have it all. He's the eight best of the twenty six.
Track Yeah exactly. I'm like, if you can play me a twenty six track album where there's more than four good songs, I'll give you a million quid. It will never fucking happen. It just won't happen. It's just I know I'll never have to give anyone a million quid because no, it won't happen. It's just it's not true. I mean, I just don't get it. And also, I feel like self editing is so important. It's like the one fall down of prints. Everyone says it, there's just
so much work. It's like, mate, you don't need to prove it anymore. You're a genius. You know it's fine. Actually you're making it worse. You're making it seem less like your genius. The more music you release, just stop. And I really think editing is so important. I had it before I write. Some people lead it after they write. That's fine, but I could never write a hundred songs and then just pick the ten best or whatever I
only wrote. Like I said, I wrote essentially nine and a half songs and I just took one of them away.
The dand that we've referenced a couple of times in this conversation, like he says, Dan Kerrey, who people aren't familiar with that name. He is producer and songwriter and label boss based in South London. He is probably best known for working with like South London bands like Black Midi and Black Country, New Road and people like that. Yeah, Kate tempers, of course. So have you known Dan a long time? You wrote the collection songs and you were
they were they all recorded with Dan? Or were they recording and then you kind of finessed them at the end with Dan?
How did it well?
We recorded them all in his studio because even though like I wrote and arranged and basically produced it here, it is still a kitchen at the end of the day.
I can make a cup of tea.
Yeah, but I'm still I'm quite a purist. I've never known my cat made this much noise. It's hilarious. It's like the one time she needs to be quiet.
Lips has found is that her favorite toy.
Ye doesn't have a favorite tie. It's the noisiest tie she's found, that's for sure. Yeah, we're both quite massive purists when it comes to recording. I've always been like that about the studio or not so much on the first album because I didn't know what was doing. But once I knew what I was doing, and you know, I wanted my records to sound as good as the records that I love, obviously, then that starts to become
really important. So no, we're both quite funny about how things are recorded and what they were recorded on and with and all the rest of it. So I would never have done it here, but I did write, I wrote and arranged, and you know, the sound and the feel of the record was all designed here. I went to his studio which is down the road and Stretum. It's only like a five minute drive away. But I've
known Dan for years. I first met him on the first album because me and Ben I really liked his work with bands like Hot Chip and stuff like that, and we went to actually mix the record with him initially in his studio and Strettum, but it kind of went further than mixing. It was definitely definitely additional production by that point, and uh Me and Dan got on
so well and both love distortions so much. We just took it way too far, to the point where by the time we sent the mixes back to the record label, they were like, what the fuck have you done? You the whole thing for a bit crusher. It was like, that's basically what we have done. So yeah, we just really went for it. It was like, a it was really gnarly. I mean that records quite gnarly anyway, but you know, it's really tinny and like jagged, but it was really really gnarly. It was like ah all the
way through. So yeah, that that got shelved. But they kind of basically were like, yeah, we think we're going to send it to America to like the biggest mixer on the planet. Maybe not Dan Garry, and I think,
you know, Dan was disappointed. I was quite disappointed. But actually Quicksand on the first album is still Dan's, you know, our mix, our mix we did with Dan because nobody else seemed to understand Quicksand, which I thought was interesting, and he's the only one that managed to capture the essence of it mix wise, in any way, shape or form. So Quicksand is still his mix, but everything else is mixed by serving Can. We've known each other since then,
but we didn't talk loads. Over the years. I went to a few of his parties. We've always sort of stayed We've always stayed in touch, and we always really got on and a lot of my friends know his friends and people as well, so there's always been a connection. But then I think I came out of this and I realized that because I, like I said, initially, I was going to take the record i'd been doing that I ditched and I was going to take parts of
it and then try and add to it. So I thought, oh, I need somebody that's going to understand the record I've been making and also understands me because I'm now in a really vulnerable place. So I called Dan from Holiday. All these decisions were very quick looking back, Wow, I called Dan from Holiday and I was like, I need your help, like now, and I told him the situation.
And there is other things that the situations well, which I don't want to go into publicly or anything, but there was other emotional issues and relationship problems, and I just said I need your help badly. I'm in a really dark place. I felt. I felt like i'd kind of been abused as well, and I felt like I'd been worn down mentally, and I just needed help. And he he was very sympathetic, very understanding, very supportive. He said, all right, when you come back, you know, come back
and we'll sit down and we'll have a chat. And I never actually played him that record. He's never heard it. He said, I actually don't want to hear it. He was like, I don't want to hear it. I think you should go and I think you should go and write some other songs. Actually, I think it's a far better idea. So I went and did that, and then I played him like the beginning of Automatic Driver and do you Feel And he was just seemed obsessed by them.
He was just like, absolutely love them. He was like, right, that's it, go back home. I'm free in April. This is in February. He was like, I'm free in April, so just be done by then. I was like, what what did you fucking say? Hang on a minute. I was like, but everything takes me years. He was like, well, this isn't going to take you years, because you haven't got years now, You've got to fucking get on it. You haven't got years, Ellie. He was like, you know,
it's it's now. Whenever you know you've got to turn this round. You've got to turn it around now, so you just better be ready. And I don't know, he just sort of sparked something in me that no one's
ever really sparked before. And I had this confidence and felt supported and I felt believed in I think for the first time in my whole career, because everyone else had always thought it was Ben or somebody else, or an engineer or a mixer or It's almost like they'd be willing to give credit to it everybody else that was surrounding me, but never me. It was like, it can't be her because I don't know why, it just it can't possibly be her that's doing all of this.
She can't possibly be the talent. It's just not possible. And I'd got made me so angry over the years. I had so much pent up aggression, and I'm quite ang person anyway, so it's just getting It was just getting too much to bear, and I felt it wasn't healthy. And then finally Dan came along and was just like, I fucking believe in you. Look what you've just done in your kitchen. It's fucking great. Listen to automatic driver, like, what's the problem? Go away? Do more come back? I
was like, Oh, what a relief. It was really nice.
Before we started chatting, you took me downstairs to show me the studio that you've built. This is difference, this is this happens since you've made supervision. Yeah, but it's downstairs in your kitchen at home. Is that going to be the place that you foresee yourself writing more Lewis records in the future? And also yeah, always now? And
also it's an impressive setup. Do you ever think you would like to produce somebody else's record in there, or you know, mix somebody else's record, Like, would you move into that area as well?
Yeah? I would, Actually, I would really like to do that. I need a lot more experience first, I think. But you know I've always sort of done those things sort of hand in hand with somebody else. Like I can mix. I've got really good ears. You know, I've really good he is, and I know my music better than anybody will ever know it. And you know, I mix really well with somebody like Doan or whatever. But and I've actually just recently done a cover of Damage Goods by
Gang of Four because Andy Gill asked me to. And that's the first track I've actually mixed on my own with nobody else there. And that was nice proof to me that actually, you're at a point now where you certainly to mix your own tracks. You could almost pretty much mix an entire album of your own, which I was really really, really really happy to realize and to get to that point. That track will hopefully be out soon, and then everybody else can judge whether I'm shit at
mixing or not, but I'm certainly really really happy with it. Yeah, I would love to. I'd love to go into that area. I think LaRue's not going to be an old person's game. I don't want to be sixty five on stage singing in for the Kill. It's not my vibe. It's just really not I don't want to be doing that to anybody else or myself. You know, she's a to Pan type character, and i'd like to keep her that way.
I don't want to ruin her. I don't want to disgrace her either, So I think it's really important to me that I stop at the right time in order to be remembered in the way that I would like to be remembered. I can't see myself doing a black style moment. I can't see myself being Madonna or Dinah Ross like going out doing shows when I'm night seventy. I just can't see it. I don't want it either.
I also really like loads of other elements of like normal life, and I don't really want my whole entire life to be filled with music industry and management meetings and interviews and promo trips, and I just I don't think I do. You know, I don't mind talking about music for the rest of my life, but I don't necessarily always want it to be in the same vein where I'm always the artist and it's always about me
in my life. I think it would be nice to actually be able to move into a different realm where I can spend, you know, the last thirty forty years of my life in my kitchen with my cat mixing records. WOULD absolutely love that. It sounds like a dream.
I would love to hear you producing the record for somebody else. I think that'd be really the idea really excites me.
That would be great.
Yeah, I would really like it as well. I think for me it would be about the right bands. What I really noticed from obviously now knowing Dan extremely well to the point where he's like my brother, obviously, I see the variation of work that he gets involved in, and it's it's hard for me to imagine myself doing so much varied work because I'm so specific with my music taste. I mean, my music tastes really narrow, and it's really narrow, I mean for somebody that does what
I do. And I think that from a production perspective, obviously, that's really important that you can kind of apply yourself to many different musical guises and genres and stuff like that. And I think, you know, I'd find it. There's nowhere I'd be able to produce a band because I haven't come from a band background, and producing a band is is a whole different ballgame. You know, you need a
very certain type of studio. You need to have a great engineer or you need to be one yourself who knows how to record drums really well, Like I don't know how to set up a mic, up a drum kit. I'm not going to sit here and say how to do that, because I don't I know how to produce electronic records. I come from a dance music background when
it comes to production, or a pop electronic background. And actually, if I look at the landscape today and I think about bands that or acts that today, if I tried to make a list in my head of acts that I could produce, I struggle to think of one. And also, I think that the ones that I'd like to produce are already well beyond my well beyond my reaches as a new producer. So it's difficult, but you never know in the future that may open up. I don't know
Anyway, good Night,