LUXE: 'I want to break down barriers'

Growing up in the United Kingdom and never having had too much free time in her life because she was just always studying music, it’s no wonder LUXE would later mix bass-heavy club sounds and classical music. But before that was even an option for the hybrid thinker, she would worm her way into clubs with someone else’s ID. ‘I remember seeing Heidi play a proper kind of old-school Chicago house set, which was my first club experience. Before sneaking into clubs, I used to listen to UK Garage before I even knew what that genre was called.’

Having played the flute from the age of five, and then ‘in the most intense way in her life’ at sixteen because there was a chance she’d go study at one of the UK’s eleven conservatories, she went on to study classical music in Manchester. She dove straight into the city's nightlife besides her uni life, though, and finally felt part of a community because of the friends she made there, including Connor Cooper, who founded CROP Radio. ‘There weren’t many people from my uni who were integrated in both the electronic and classical worlds like I was, so I felt a bit alien at points before.’ The freedom she felt when composing her own music and having other students and musicians play those scores is the aspect she specifically loved about her studies. ‘That’s still what I’m doing now.’

A space without rules

Listening to more and more electronic music after having her whole world consumed by classical music for years, finding new instruments in the form of computer software changed her life completely. ‘The pandemic started when I graduated, which meant I couldn’t perform my final recital. I’d been working on that for a year and I stopped practicing regurlarly for the first time in my life after that. The first time I opened the case in eighteen months, I burst into tears’, she recalls her recent years. ‘I would still feel very inspired by electronic music, so I started teaching myself producing. It’s taken a lot of time to rekindle my relationship with my flute, but I'm happy to be where I am now.’

During the three following years, she was ‘addicted’ to Ableton, as she recalls – and she secretly still is. LUXE: ‘I was obsessed with opening the software on my laptop and experimenting with it, because it’s like an endless void of learning and discovering.’ Her music is hard to put into a category, but as friend, respected DJ, and producer Angel D’Lite told her the day before the interview: LUXE’s productions are still similar to when she just started to combine breakbeats, strings, and orchestral sounds, but they now sound even more refined. ‘When I started producing music, I wasn’t hard on myself. That was new to me, as I had always been beating myself up about stuff. Ableton felt like a space without rules and where it didn’t matter if the music was rubbish when I was still learning stuff.’

The result of her 'obsession' is a successful EP release on HAAi and Alice Pelly's label Radical New Theory, titled 'Belonging', a release with Angel D'lite called 'Enchanted', and most recently, a two-track release: 'aether'. 'I've been feeling more experimental recently', says LUXE while sitting in her studio. I'm trying to build worlds – when I make club music, I still want it to feel like it's under one umbrella with the more classical stuff you'll hear in my live shows or when I play with a full ensemble. I want it to be a spectrum of sound, instead of the internal battle I used to fight over how I was going to make it all feel cohesive', she goes on, expressing that she'd also love to see those audiences combine. And that's how LUXE breaks down barriers.

Finding your space in music and freedom in sound is almost always a journey, and getting help on the road to your destination can never hurt. This year at ADE Lab, four mentors hosted the opening talks of the newly introduced 'Courses': Producer, Visual Arts, Industry, and Performing Artist. Seeing LUXE's track record, it was an obvious choice to get her in front of an eager audience of future music professionals to speak about how you find your own way into being an authentic performing artist.

'When I feel inspired, I feel like I need to do it right now, and I can make music come alive quite quickly,' she told her ADE Lab students. 'There are no rules in making music, which means there's endless learning from everyone else.' The main thing she wanted to get across to everyone present on ADE Wednesday was that it's always about authentic self-expression within your own creative process. 'So often, we are missing just getting down to our inner self because we get lost in external pressures like social media. We're faced with jumping through hoops to get people's eyes and ears to listen and interact with our output. My ADE Lab session was focused on getting back to basics and helping people find their core.'

The biggest takeaway from LUXE's Course session was that it's very okay to be vulnerable and very necessary as well. Discussing positive ways to reframe the online platforms we all use was the way to go. If it's up to LUXE, social media would be healthier as a portfolio instead of getting caught up in numbers and losing your experimental side.

Her ADE Lab session coincidentally collided with the release day of 'aether', for which LUXE made an accompanying video. 'That video shows me at my most vulnerable because of the movements I make. It felt very personal to share it, but it was me at my most authentic. When I drew myself back to the core of my inspiration and didn't think about getting more bookings or growing my audience, I felt truly liberated', she concludes with a smile.