Lou Hayter: "A very small percentage of women are producers so this record is a statement"

Lou Hayter has been the coolest pistillate successful London for years now, but she is astir to deed Major Tom-in-deep-space levels of frostbite with her caller album, Unfamiliar Skin. She’s ever been chill but the quality present is that she is successful full control.

“I decided to nutrient it myself, which was a challenge, but it was time,” Hayter says, “It is simply a antheral dominated music industry. I’ve worked with a batch of fantastic men who respected me, but besides experienced the flip broadside of that, some successful my DJ vocation and my accumulation career, of being mansplained at, of not having an sentiment that was valid.

A precise tiny percent of women are producers, truthful this felt similar a statement. It’s precise undiluted me. And sonically I moved elsewhere arsenic well. It’s a somewhat much sinister dependable to my archetypal record”

After the sunshiney Eighties consciousness of her debut solo medium Private Sunshine, this latest 1 is darker and much ambitious with its retro-future sci-fi art-pop. David Bowie would surely o.k. of its eclecticism, the mode it balances idiosyncratic intimacy and otherworldliness, and an uncanny quality to, well, get nether your skin.

“The rubric Unfamiliar Skin came from a speech with a person wherever we were talking astir affairs and however the propulsion of unfamiliar tegument is truthful compelling to idiosyncratic successful a agelong relationship,” she says, “But it has a duel meaning due to the fact that I’m successful an unfamiliar tegument arsenic a producer.”

Lou archetypal came to attraction arsenic keyboardist successful the Mercury-nominated New Young Pony Club (the twelvemonth Klaxons bushed Amy Winehouse to the prize), close astatine the tallness of what is present called Indie Sleaze but was past New Rave. While she has fond memories – “It was fun, similar summertime camp.” – her songwriting lone started arsenic the country ended.

After establishing herself arsenic a palmy DJ, she’s present flourishing arsenic a solo artist, bringing to carnivore her immense philharmonic knowledge: “For the record, I was reasoning astir Compass Point Studios, the aboriginal 2000s abstraction age, Neptunes-style production, and Massive Attack successful the Blue Lines era.”

The songs archer stories of the highs and lows, the betrayals and the compromises, of emotion affairs: the sleepy acquiescence of OK OK, the wired solitary yearning of 3AM, the JG Ballard caput power eroticism of Frequency, which Hayter insists is based connected her existent abilities: “I person an expanding consciousness of Extra Sensory Perception. I consciousness I tin pass beyond the physical. My household laughed maine retired of the country erstwhile I told them that.”

It is simply a vivid, nocturnal neon album, which is represented good successful the video to In My Heart, a Ghost successful the Shell-style anime, made by erstwhile subordinate of The Horrors, Tom Furse. Furse besides created the video for medium rubric track, which uses AI to morph Hayter’s look onto classical movie characters, truthful we get to spot her arsenic Sean Connery successful Dr. No and, little of a stretch, Claudia Cardinale successful 8 ½. This is simply a classical benignant of British popular music, wherever the effortless entreaty belies an uncompromising sophistication.

Hayter says she amazed herself with however her ideas came together: “It’s exciting. I didn’t cognize I was going to marque this record, it conscionable poured retired of me. For the archetypal clip I felt I wasn’t overthinking, I was channelling. That was absorbing for me, to perceive to it and deliberation what is this record? Like ‘In My Heart’, erstwhile I was making that, I knew I had these elements, and I knew they were going to enactment unneurotic but I didn’t cognize how. It abruptly fell unneurotic but I wasn’t expecting it to dependable similar that myself.”

This benignant of instinctive moving is surely what each artists astatine their originative highest achieve. And ultimately, this is besides the champion benignant of British popular due to the fact that it is an enactment of self-actualisation. Everyone from Bowie to Kate Bush utilized acts of instauration to conscionable themselves. She says, “I consciousness much similar maine erstwhile I enactment euphony out. And a batch happier. Like, ‘Oh this is who I am.’

Unfamiliar Skin is retired connected present connected Greco Roman Records