LUCIANBLOMKAMP: Where In The World Is LUCIANBLOMKAMP?

- One of Australia’s moodiest beatmakers is back, with a new full-length, is this four now? He’s such a prolific producer, collaborator and releaser of all the diverse things he’s been sweating over, it’s like we already know with a great deal of accuracy the answer to the question Where In The World Is LUCIANBLOMKAMP? Going back and listening to older records though, you may get a slight jolt and realise, more and more, it’s actually a pretty pertinent question.

To begin with, Lucian doesn’t seem to have made doing press for his latest much of a priority. He was a lot more talkative back when he was putting out the SD EP or the epic undertaking that was all the parts of Sick Of What I Don’t Understand. I haven’t seen any interviews or track-by-tracks floating around the webs, although, actually, I was wondering if he was feeling a bit guilty about staying schtum, because he has released an eight minute ‘explainer’ video for the new album. Make what you will of the vid (his label has called it surreal, which I think is a compliment), it sets up a scenario where Blomkamp is talking to an interviewer, but, to be honest, he doesn’t sound very pleased to have to tell them what’s been going on. Questions like “where did the album come from?” are met with retorts like “absurd question, it comes from everything…a pumpkin pie!” He’s got even less time for questions about art: “...is art repitious? Everything is repetitious!" Then as if daring you to accuse him of making cookie-cutter beats he pouts “Sometimes I like to dance” and hits the listener with a slice of his banger collaboration with Ninjarachi Pray4u.

The truth about where he’s at can be found in that collabanger and all his other duetting on the new record and it's that, for a while, the two corners of LUCIANBLOMKAMP’s world have been drawing together. The production he does for himself, his solo records that he pours his heart and soul, his blood, sweat and tears into, have, over time, featured more and more guest artists. At the same time he’s been doing a lot of production for other people’s work, making the beats for their records. If I had to guess, the latter is probably more financially remunerative and … is it less artistically rewarding, really? It’s probably not a surprise that the two have started to blend into each other.

They really have though, you listen to cuts like Huh? Yeah! which features Hearteyes and it sounds just like the emo hyper-pop I know from him, but like Lucian, well not so much. I used to associate Blomkamp with his great fondness for sentimental, dark triphop and other sounds that owed more to 1992 than 2022, so to hear him busting out contemporary trap and autotuned r’n’b is - well it’s different! Because so much here is dependent on who he brings to the party, sometimes the music even sounds a bit like it used to, when he’s hanging with really old friends like Lonelyspeck on the very oldschool sounding dance of Closer.

It’s almost like the only way you can tell that this is all LUCIANBLOMKAMP is because it’s so moody. He’s not fussed what the singer is singing about, as long as it’s sad: It’s gotta be in a minor key, dude! It’s kinda funny when you think about it like that and how many of the different songs here end up being about interpersonal conflict. Even Ninajarachi’s party-as banger is all “Pray for me and I’ll pray for you / An eye for an eye!” Like they’re exchanging salutes before a dancefloor knife fight.

This ‘love letter to the Australian music ecosystem’ is like a sampler of everything dark, urban and unsettling in the scene right now; a more modern echo of the sounds where Blomkamp started out. So is this a boldly new and eclectic sound for him? Is it a pastiche created of other people’s? Is he here at all? Whatever it is, LUCIANBLOMKAMP is running it like a puppet-master, high above the stage. I guess that sooner or later producers, just like the rest of us, disappear into the dark of the sky.

- Chris Cobcroft.