- Personal identity is formed in a crucible; subject to the judgmental gazes of those that surround us, strained to breaking point by forces that crash through society and always full of hidden internal fault lines, threatening to break our whole being apart. Over the course of her artistic career, Lupa J’s Imogen Jones has documented, if not poured her experience of these things, into music.
Having been lucky enough to stumble across the young producer’s first EP, Seeds, as far back as 2014, I’ve (unhelpfully, I’m sure) offered my dime-store commentary on her psychology along the way, but I always get a bit paranoid trying to judge what's going on in someone's head, based on the evidence of the pop music that I make. Perhaps anticipating more floundering on my part, Lupa has penned a primer for understanding her debut full-length, Swallow Me Whole.
Overall, the feeling behind it all is this intense desire for escape … I was coming to terms with the fact that the relationship I was in was hurting me, that straight relationships repeatedly left me feeling detached from my body and my sexuality - and that I also had a lot of previously unrecognised queer attraction. Much of the album is focused around a feeling of intense newfound desire, and the inconvenient and problematic situations in which it demanded to be felt.
Well, that makes things easier. Easier is probably the wrong word, but at least it put the brakes on me clodhopping through Lupa’s mind again. I’d much rather focus on the music here because, whether it’s an effective catharsis for her not, it stands extremely strong in its own right.
There’s always been a dark turn in Lupa J’s work: where tentative electropop and lyrical passages on her violin gave way to pounding beats, edm and a mood best described as fierce. The back-and-forth between pop and edm is still in play on Swallow Me Whole but there’s nothing tentative about it. The awkward melding of strings and synths is flat-out abandoned -Lupa appears to have hung up the fiddle- and there’s a straight-up focus on bringing the beats.
Just to look at Lupa’s stylishly severe, bleach-blonde haircut, I’d say she’s been listening to some Grimes and the music seems to confirm that. Album opener, Drift, has an echo of Grimes’ Oblivion in its ethereal, descending scales. I don’t think the record is overly derivative, however. It is, for instance, completely devoid of Grimes’ self-conscious weirdness. Instead Lupa J presents with a no-nonsense confidence and power. The beats barrel forth like they know exactly where they’re going, produced with a clean understanding of the craft, one that surely belongs to producers twice her age. I’m consistently reminded of late career artists who’ve come back and delivered some of the strongest fare they’ve ever created. Karin Drejer, Jon Hopkins, Robyn, Four Tet, Gang Gang Dance, all spring to mind listening to Swallow Me Whole.
I’m pleased to say that, even given the libidinal energy pulsing through all of what’s here, Lupa still manages a ‘dark turn’ to alarm and unsettle. There’s no better example than the album’s title track. The syncopated beats are meaty and power forth like an unnervingly committed drumline band. The banshee shriek that segues out of the verses literally recalls the unholy savagery of Pharmakon. This lunges right over into the edm-industrial territory that Rebel Yell has been mining so effectively.
If the increased psychological honesty that’s more readily available to people these days has taught us anything, it’s that life, even when it’s under control, is rarely easy. You may even have nailed down one corner of your existence, only to find that the rest of your inner life has become a screaming basketcase while your back was turned. Dealing with questions of sexuality are some of life’s most difficult challenges. So, assuming that my idea of a pop-psychological whack-a-mole applies at all to Lupa, I’ll put it like this: the rest of her life must be a disaster, because the focus and concentation she's put in here, has produced my favourite dance record so far, this year.
- Chris Cobcroft.