LAN Party
As part of our Artists To Watch list, we’ve conducted interviews with the eight artists featured in our 2021 Spring/Summer edition. Check out our Q&A with LAN Party below and click here to check out the full list.
With the release of their debut EP, PLUR, this past year marked a significant milestone for electronic artist LAN Party. It kicked off with a partnership deal with Majestic Casual, the popular Youtube channel, which packaged the project under its label. As a child of the digital world, LAN Party introduced and guided listeners through an enchanting, digitized arrangement of sound across the EP’s four songs. It takes a certain expertise to be able to convey such intense emotions through sound, especially on tracks where vocals are less emphasized–but there’s no doubt in saying that this is a skill that LAN Party has successfully achieved throughout their discography.
What’s the story behind the name LAN Party? Are you a big videogamer?
When I was a little kid, my parents were not about the video game shit. And then when I became middle-school kind of age, I got an Xbox and was really into PC [games]. I would say that’s kind of the thing that got me into computers and eventually audio honestly because I think for a while I was playing games and got bored of it and heard about different audio production software. So, I literally just started doing that and it kind of felt like a game at first. And then it turned into making music. I started doing that in eighth grade or freshman year of high school and then now I’m literally going to school for mixing and shit. So yeah, LAN Party was a formative part of my early adolescence I would say.
This year you released your debut EP titled PLUR. Did you base the title off of the raver ideology of “Peace Love Unity Respect (PLUR)?
Yeah, so that was basically the idea. Do you know archive.org? It was set out to be like a library that would exist on the internet. They have hundreds of thousands of scanned e-books and it’s all free. Also audio and video. For example, somebody who had them on the physical formats would upload old 80s Japanese karaoke music videos, like the visuals that would go along with the karaoke machine. So it’s just really weird, obscure media on there. And I found this huge collection of rave zines from the 90s. At the time, while I was working on that, I was getting really heavy into dance music and I came across the term. I felt that it really worked with the content of the EP and that it was four songs and each of them had this resemblance to one of those concepts.
Tell me more about the process behind the EP.
All four of those songs started as demos that I had made randomly. I have so many random ideas. I just start so many things and forget about them. Over quarantine, we were off school for a bit, and I took the chance to go through a lot of the shit that I had just forgotten about. I found cool stuff and kind of worked with the ideas and got them further along. And then [Majestic Casual] contacted me and asked if I would do a full album, but I didn’t want to do that yet with a label. I wanted to do something smaller with a label. I just wasn’t prepared to sign that away. We decided on a four-song EP and I sent them the ideas that I had and they were really hyped about it. So, I finished it and mixed it and we got it mastered.
Considering the references in your music to rave and party culture, at any point during this pandemic have you felt like you’ve lost a form of inspiration due to the halt in large social gatherings?
Yeah, a hundred percent. DIY shows in Chicago definitely have been a big part of my coming into adulthood. It’s been fucking rough not having those meeting places of culture. I’ve met so many cool people and a lot of my friends through the scene. I feel like Chicago really does right now have its own, at least pre-COVID, electronic music style. I think I had to figure out how to navigate not having that in my life and trying to figure out how to still stay inspired without the social aspect of it.
A few months ago you posted a live set on YouTube. How was that and do you see yourself doing that more in the future?
Yeah, so that was really one of the first times that I had ever played my own music live because, before then, I didn't really have enough releases where I was comfortable doing a full set. I got this opportunity to do this cool online [set]. It’s like a festival. I think they’re doing it monthly. I was just like this is the time. I wanna get this shit together now. I was definitely pretty anxious about it. Me and my roommate Brennan, he was the guy playing drums and playing synth, really just fucking grinded it out for like two weeks and got it down pretty well. It was just so rewarding and so fucking fun. I wanna do it way more. I loved it..