“It started with me wanting to have all my own samples. I wanted to keep everything as my own samples, but it didn’t work out practically. Most of the samples on the album are my own, but some of the kicks weren’t – just standard kit stuff. The melodic samples are my own, the piano bits. From detuned piano, too, that don’t really have the right key. Everything on the album is a little bit off, which I like.”
While previous material was defined by a resounding sense of warmth, Ex Nihilo emanates a frosty, darkly sheen, while still retaining a palpable body heat. “I wanted to get darker, it feels like a thing you do when you get older. It feels more mature,” Lavurn explains.
Embedded within Sydney’s fertile factions of electronic music talent, Lavurn is no stranger to collaborating with peers. For Ex Nihilo, fellow Black Vanilla cohort and Collarbones star Marcus Whale was enlisted to help put the finishing touches on the album.”I was trying to finish the album, I had all these songs. Some of the songs weren’t really done, they didn’t have vocal parts. So I asked Marcus to help me out. He wrote some vocal parts on Deatheat and Premier, and did some editing on Adolphia. That was more of him kind of finishing off the album, making sure it was complete, in a way. I didn’t know, because I spent so long – like a year – writing all these songs, not being sure if the songs were done. So it was a case of Marcus saying ‘this is done, this is not, this is cool’, to guide it into being ready for release.”
Though the sonic textures present on Ex Nihilo are operating on the same high level as the current vanguard of producers across the globe, Lavurn wasn’t so much attuned to the happenings of the electronic underground. “I probably thought that I was in tune with contemporary electronic music at the time, but I probably wasn’t. I was in my own zone, listen to a lot of Burial – which I think is quite obvious on the record. He’s just an endless inspiration,” he states. “I was in my own world, not too conscious of the influences. Getting deep and instinctual. Feeling the groove and doing things naturally.”
With a constant stream of remixes, original material and performances under his myriad of guises, it’s difficult to pin down what’s next for Lavurn, but we can safely assume it will be captivating. “I’m always working on Guerre stuff, so that album is almost two years old in my mind. I need to do more things, but also let the album sit and let whoever likes it like it. It’s still relevant to me, I don’t hate it. I suppose I shouldn’t be at that point anyway, it’s just been released,” he laughs.
“Right now it’s pretty easy, but things might get busy later with more Black Vanilla stuff, and more Cassius [Select] stuff as well,” Lavurn adds. With Black Vanilla’s loose and sensual live throwdowns taking dancefloors by storm, Lavurn is able to take away cues from the trio and add them into his Guerre performances. “Definitely. Black Vanilla is really bodily. It’s about watching our presence on stage. I really learnt how you can hold people with your physical presence, and that’s what I’ve tried to do more of with Guerre. It makes sense with the music. I like embodying the music to some extent, getting people to believe it as much as I believe it. Black Vanilla is more physical, and more there, to make a statement. It’s an incredible thing to be able to perform for people. If you don’t go all-in, it’s a waste of time for everyone.”
BY LACHLAN KANONIUK
