Renowned Trance Tastemaker Gareth Emery Releases ‘House In The Streetlight Under LSR/CITY, His Techno And Immersive Laser Show Moniker
It's so much more than music. It is much more than just a live performance. It's an experience.
This is LSR/VILLE.
The project is the techno pseudonym of renowned trance producer Gareth Emery. LSR/CITY combines melodic techno with emotive sounds to create a musical landscape that evokes pure dancefloor enjoyment. The songs are accompanied by an unforgettable, highly immersive and innovative laser visual experience. In fact, a live performance could make Emery the new king of lasers.
Emery's debut album on LSR/CITY is called "Like A Prayer" featuring 21-year-old London singer Annabelle. The clip was a resounding success: 20 million views and a million shares on social networks. The experimental project is another impressive achievement in Emery's illustrious career as it showcases his versatile musical abilities and experience in creating an unforgettable show that took a year to plan.
Today, November 17th, the tastemaker further showcases his production skills with the release of House in the Streetlight.
The song takes music lovers on a journey that begins with punchy beats and soothing vocals, followed by subtle bass lines and angelic landscapes. Fast-paced bass takes center stage, leading to an explosion of punchy synths and hard-hitting bass lines designed to set the dance floor on fire. The song returns to its heavenly beginning and heavenly lines before the drop returns. The song is truly incredible vocally and skillfully performed.
According to Emery, he was so focused on creating the multi-sensory laser production for six months that he didn't have much time to write music. He later stated that he was watching TV one night and came up with the idea for the song, which gave him "the vibes I look for in music", which are happiness, sadness and warm feelings. Later, he entered the studio and wrote "House Among the Streetlights" in one night. He adds that singer Annabelle is LSR/CITY's lead singer as they have been creating songs together for four years.
The sound designer created the track five days before the Electric Daisy Carnival (EDC) in Las Vegas, where he performed it on the Kinetic Field main stage while filming for his Gareth Emery trance music project.
"['House in the Streetlight'] was one right away [that] when I played it, the fans were trying to figure out what it was called," says Emery. "There's already a video on YouTube with hundreds of thousands of views trying to figure out what the song is called. We've had an organic response from our audience."
Note that playing Kinetic Field is an interesting dichotomy: high musical pressure and low production. He says it was the first time he had played the main stage at the award-winning festival, which can hold 70,000 people, since 2014. Attracting large numbers of people creates a "ruthless atmosphere". On the contrary, the scene has minimal visual output as the set has a very artistic design. Insomniac, the company behind EDC Las Vegas, is responsible for producing Kinetic Field, which places less demands on performers. The lack of personnel would not allow LSR/HORAD to be broadcast.
Emery says he's always loved lasers and wanted a lot of them in his melodic techno shows. "LSR/STAD started by looking at how far we could go," he says. "Lasers are the only thing we're really worried about."
The track selector says his goal during the jam was to learn the video design programs Premier and Final Cut. Thus, he was able to take part in the production of LSR/CITY. He and his team researched the hottest shows in terms of production value and realized they could surpass the visual impact of those sets.
"[We'd watch] these incredible laser shows and think, 'Wow, this is shit.' We can do better,” says Emery. "The biggest thing was that we thought, 'Let's make this our focus.' That's what this show is about. We try to be pretty minimal in terms of screens and effects and everything else and keep everything focused on the lasers. And when we did our first tour at the end of last year, people fell in love with the show. Then they said, "Really, lasers are our thing." You go there for one reason and that would be the lasers. "
"If you can provide that experience, a lot of people will want to watch the show, but the gap between those who can provide that experience and those who can't is going to widen," he adds.
Emery says he entered the world of melodic techno because "I'm always trying to find something different, something that excites me." Although the producer says he loves trance music and has been producing it for 20 years, he wants to change his sound abilities "to make life more interesting".
"I never wanted to make music in the same style my whole life," he says. “When you're known for a certain style, a certain way, it's great because people know exactly what to expect. And that's kind of a bad thing, because if you create something that deviates a little bit from that, the audience might say, "Oh, that's not why we're listening to you." We expected you to do what you always [post]." I think realizing that I can't experiment as much with currently released records like Gareth Emery, LSR/CITY, and that this multi-sensory experience can be an outlet for the crazy experimentation that I really enjoy. »
Emery definitely wants to continue to push his music and discover himself as an artist. He says he finds inspiration in "connecting with new artists" who are making music differently than before.
"I try to watch these shows to see what we can learn from them," says the producer. “It's easy to feel threatened when someone comes in and does something completely different. It's usually better to say, "Why are they successful?" What are they doing that we are missing? »
He cites TikTok as an example. He says a lot of established artists like him didn't want to create video content because they were used to Instagram and its horizontal video format. That desire to not fit in resonated with Emery, but he later realized he needed to master creating vertical videos to share his music in a way that would increase engagement. The genre-defying producer believes the industry discovers something new every three years, pointing to past changes such as the shift from vinyl to CD, the shift from MP3 downloads to streaming, the shift from magazines to social media networking and the evolution of Facebook to Facebook. . Instagram. "You have to be open to this ever-changing landscape," he says, "and be willing to adapt, because otherwise you're going to disappear very quickly."
Emery says the aforementioned changes in music consumption are the biggest changes he's seen in the industry in his career. He says the music scene was first suppressed by the Internet, especially programs like Napster and file sharing. He says the industry wasn't ready for it, and most music executives in the early 2000s thought the Internet would disappear and be banned.
"I think the fact that music was created in that way and continues to be created in that period served as a warning to other industries," says Emery. "Television was much better equipped to handle the Internet than music."
He says these changes brought about by the Internet "took two decades to happen," referring to how artists used to make money selling their music and now make very little profit from streaming music. The tournament, he adds, has become more critical, but "I don't think we've seen how it ends yet."
As for the club scene, the LSR/CITY project creator says it was "this incredible time" when dance music first came to the United States, and "being there on that wave was just awesome." Entering the industry in this golden age, he says, allowed many artists to be "in the right place at the right time" as clubs were packed three nights a week. However, the lockdown crippled the industry, but it has since recovered to the point where things seem "healthy" again and "there's a pretty good scene in the world." Although the industry is back to normal, he says audience expectations have changed since then because people want more than just music.
“I think the biggest change that's happened, which definitely inspired LSR/CITY, is that I don't think people want to go out and listen to a DJ like they did 10 years ago when dance music originated in [North] America,” Emery says. “I think it's really important that when you have an experience, and that experience can take many forms, people want to have an experience, not just listen to music. I think artists are going to have to adapt and figure out how to create a visual show as well as a musical show because I think that's where things evolve in terms of what the audience wants. »
Discover LSR/CITY and its supernatural laser production on a 13-city, 16-show tour.
10/24/24: Vancouver - PNE Coliseum
2/15/24: San Jose - Civic Center
02/16/24: San Jose - Civic Center
02/17/24: Los Angeles - Palladio
02/18/24: Los Angeles - Palladio
02/22/24: Phoenix - Van Buren
2/24/23: Denver - Ballroom Mission
03/01/24: Minneapolis - Armory
03/24/24: Chicago – Radius
8/3/24: Montreal - New City Gas
03/09/24: Toronto - Rebels
03/10/24: Toronto - Rebels
03/15/24: New York – Kings Theatre
3/16/24: Washington - Echostage
03/29/24: Austin - Contest Project
3/30/24: Dallas - South Ballroom
