Raised on a steady diet of indie rock, jazz, techno and house scenes of New Orleans, self-described “composer of electronic and instrumental music” Luxley is today (March 22) releasing Chromatics, an EP showcasing his chromasthesia. A guitarist, bassist and singer at heart, Luxley sees sound as color and has channeled his unusual quality into the six-track project.
“The biggest driving force for this new record,” he tells OffBeat.com, “is having people see the colors that I see, and have them experience certain feelings created by the color spectrum of the record.” For Chromatics, he opted to marry his “organic instrumentation and electronica into a story-like experience, revolving around the colors” that he sees. He’s termed the sound “chromasthesic,” and says he uses color to ” anchor listeners to the ground and connect them to sounds of electronica.”
Luxley first discovered his chromasthesia after an accident he had when he was younger, but it was something he kept to himself. “When I went to medical school at Tulane University in 2012 and found literature describing it, the condition slowly bled into my writing in 2016 when I started producing electronic music,” he says.
Growing up in New Orleans, Luxley spent time in his mid-20s at Dragon’s Den, where local DJs like Unicorn Fukr, Kidd Love and Boogie T. spun records at “Bass Church” (that has since moved to Santos). He mentions Techno Club, which was founded over a decade ago and “brings the essence of techno to New Orleans” and where local DJs in “The Deep Family” like Javier Drada, DJ Marcus Lott, Lleauna, Otto, Rye and more can be seen.
“You can sometimes find these artists at The Drifter Hotel banging out sunny sets by the pool,” says Luxley. “DJ Carmine P Filthy, co-founder of Bass Church at Dragon’s Den and repeat performer at Voodoo Festival, has hosted some insane sets at Techno Club in the past, and supposedly spins at Santos from time to time. He should be a must-see on your agenda.”
Luxley has shared stages with Bombay Bicycle Club, Milo Greene, Mystery Skulls, and Chris Baio of Vampire Weekend, Luxley’s exploration of his own musical style led him to realize how vivid the sounds he was making were. ‘I realized I was passionately building a vast library of sounds, textures, and pop-centric melodies that were strikingly colorful to me,” he explains. “Incidentally, the sounds crossed a spectrum of genres (e.g. hip-hop, vintage, synthwave, edm, and electro-pop). These pieces eventually became the virtual worlds found on the record that express my chromasthesia.”
As such, Chromatics is strikingly different from other works of his. As he explains, “My previous direction wasn’t speaking to me anymore, but I think that experience was invaluable. Since the change, I feel like I can connect with people on more a fundamental level.”
For more on Luxley, find him here: Spotify | Facebook | I
