5 Questions with LÂLKA
Borneo-born, Meanjin-based multi-hyphenate LÂLKA creates effervescent glitch future club music with high-octane aesthetics. The producer, vocalist, multi-instrumentalist and DJ presents her work through the lens of her own experiences as a queer neurodivergent woman of colour with palatial ferocity and energy.
With her unique vocal style and dynamism that comes to life through her performances and online presence, the classically-trained musician forms a niche musical sphere that is entirely her own.
She has performed at festivals such as St Jerome's Laneway Festival, FOMO and BIGSOUND, has supported the likes of international pop icon Charli XCX and ARIA-winner Genesis Owusu amongst others, and has collaborated with fellow boundary-pushing artists like Donatachi, Ninajirachi, BRUX, Feels and more.
No.1
First things first: can you tell us the inspiration behind your unique and eye-catching stage name LÂLKA? What was the pathway that led to you performing music the way you do now?
I just like the way the right angles of all the letters in my stage name looked.
The pathway that led me to performing music I do now started with piano and violin lessons, doing a classical music degree at university, and teaching myself how to produce because nobody wanted to work with me to achieve the vision I wanted or make the music I really wanted to make.
No.2
Romance + Rebellion is very vulnerable: not only does it celebrate love, it was crafted as you emerged from a significant relationship breakdown, multiple hospitalisations and eventual diagnoses of fibromyalgia and autism. Will you speak more to this? How do you, as you say, ‘find solace in the digital space’ with this new mixtape release?
It’s been a lot to process, that’s for sure! Not only that, it’s been a lot of learning which I don’t take for granted, and a lot of hard work to improve things. There are things that are out of my control, but understanding the way my brain and body works, my own psyche—all that allows me to make informed choices about my own life. I like to think that I’m getting better at looking after myself, at being kinder to myself, but I won’t lie, it takes a conscious effort.
Finding solace in the digital space is perhaps something that comes naturally to me as a child who grew up with the internet at their fingertips. The older I got, I’ve come to realise that a lot of the people I come into contact with on a daily basis aren’t on the same wavelength as me. Having fibromyalgia also limits my capacity to physically socialise, so having an online way to socialise is great. Living in Australia, due to its geography, can be frustrating at times—but thankfully with livestreams etc it’s possible to engage with and participate in other communities.
I also love the way technology allows me to express myself in different ways. There’s a line in my song ‘Hyperintense’—reality’s ugly to me—which is a way of saying how I love the escapism that we can create using the tools that various technology offer, whether it be art, spaces or interactions. I think that many neurodivergent people have super creative brains; sometimes we have to create our own worlds because the ‘real’ one sometimes feels lacking—lacking in what we want to see, experience and feel.
No.3
Your work, in particular the recently released singles ‘Lilith’ and ‘What If We Kiss to Break the Tension?’ were released as NFT digital pressings as well. What resulted in the decision to move into the NFT space? How has it been so far?
Curiosity, and the responsibility I felt as an artist to explore, question and experiment with blockchain technology and what NFTs and everything else that comes with web3 brings.
It was really easy to scoff at the hype, and it was something I didn’t want to do until I tried it for myself. And now that I’ve experimented and participated, it’s something I want to continue to explore and learn more about.
It’s been very interesting to release music as NFTs, because it gave me a way to give back to superfans by giving them 100% remix royalties from the stems that came with the songs. In my case specifically, releasing music as NFTs was as much a learning experience for me as it was for my community of superfans. There are music artists out there who find that a ‘web3 audience’ had bought their NFTs and it wasn’t their usual fanbase. In my case, the really invested members of my community (to be honest, I feel uncomfortable using the word ‘fans’) were willing to discover and explore with me.
There was a lot of back-and-forth conversation that was happening on my social media channels, but more so in my Discord server, about different aspects of technology and the value of art. I guess this is another example of how I found solace in the digital space and how I got to participate in conversations that interested me.
No.4
While working on Romance + Rebellion, what did you learn about yourself and your practise in a way you hadn’t before?
Well, I learned that I am pretty decent at mixing. This is the first time I’ve trusted myself enough to mix my own music and obviously there’s room to improve, but I’m pretty proud of that fact. I sought the advice of Becki Whitton a.k.a Aphir, whom I admire and whose work I respect. But I purposely didn’t send my music out to other professionals or my peers to get feedback on, which was something I did previously. I knew exactly what I wanted to achieve sonically, and worked until I got the music to where I wanted it to be, so there was no need to seek the feedback of other people.
One of my pet peeves is the way people offer well-meaning but unsolicited feedback on my music sometimes. When other artists show me their music to listen to, I always ask them: ‘Do you want me to provide feedback, or do you just want me to listen?’ It also changes the way I listen to the music—whether I put my producer ears on, or if I’m just listening as a ‘regular person’.
No.5
As a neurodivergent artist, what do you think neurodivergence offers towards art-making in a way that neurotypicality cannot manifest?
This is actually a difficult question to answer because I’ve only ever experienced my neurodivergent brain … everyone’s reality is their own, you know what I mean? However, one thing that I’ve learnt (disclaimer: this is my own personal experience) is that my brain works very fast and absorbs a lot of information. I don’t mean that in a ‘oh I’m a genius and know a lot of stuff’ kind of way; [I mean that] I’m always thinking, and as I’ve grown older, I’ve learnt to trust my instincts, my gut feeling, more … and I think those instincts are informed by the way my brain processes information subconsciously. For example, I am quite quick to identify a person’s ‘energy’ or character not because I’m psychic, but because I recognise patterns and take in bits of information like body language and microexpressions.
I get bored very easily, and when it comes to music, I need things to stimulate my brain. I describe my music as ‘sonically textural’: it feels like pebbles, like smooth surfaces, like glass, like sand—these form all sorts of textures in my brain. That’s why my tagline is ‘effervescent glitch future club music’.
Another thing that is common for neurodivergent folks is that many of us enjoy the feeling of deep pressure on our bodies, so when it comes to music, I’m always seeking to make my music as visceral as possible. It’s gotta hit me in the gut. I gotta feel it through my body!
Marking a magic third in Meanjin-based multi-hyphenate LÂLKA’s release catalogue, her new mixtape Romance + Rebellion is exactly as its title suggests: a cohesive and immersive journey that is nostalgic, dreamy and otherworldly as it is brutal, driving and hedonistic. It’s about love starting with an ephemeral tremor of the heart, morphing into arcane conviction and eventually being an act of rebellion in itself. It’s embracing the beauty of finding love whilst being hyper-aware of the precariousness of reality, and how this experience rewires the brain until an engram emerges. Here, LÂLKA explores the heuristic reconstruction of self through the amalgamation of heady romance and righteous, cathartic rebellion.
Watch and listen to ‘Romance + Rebellion’ above. Enjoy the rest of the album here.