Preview – Remix Artist Loston

Nashville – Ask Generation Y constituents for an opinion on electronic remix artists, and most of them will have a heated answer. Either remix artists are talentless moochers clicking around on a MacBook Pro, or they’re a new breed of visionary artists who recycle hooks to create completely new songs.

Loston is one such controversial new artist. Aussie bloggers have been buzzing about his danceable reworks of downtempo R&B tracks by Sampha, James Blake, and Drake. With only three tracks but more than 35,000 combined Soundcloud plays, Loston is buzzing but still underground.

Comparisons to Flume, a fellow Australian electronic artist and producer, are right on point. Both artists take the slow, stewing emotion of R&B and allow it to burst forth like a river dam breaking open with synth builds and drops. It’s pretty “epic shit,” a level that Loston has professed to aspiring too. His music would do well in an action movie, but it also makes walking down the street feel like the coolest thing that’s ever happened.

Loston comes to us from Perth, Australia, a surf metropolis that’s experiencing an electronica surge. Along with Loston, remix artists/producers like Palace and Slumberjack have recently been making waves on the Internet. About a year ago, Loston was a graphic designer who’d played in bands and only just begun to mess around with electronic music. He never intended to release his first Drake remix, but a friend convinced him to post it on the Internet. Low and behold, it caught and burned across the Internet, all the way to little ol’ Nashville.

Loston recently told the Perth-based blog Pilerats that he plans to put out a few more songs over the next three months, both originals and reworks. After that, he’ll think about playing live shows. But he doesn’t want to be that guy who just pushes play. Perhaps this sort of drive is what separates the moochers from the visionaries.

It remains to be seen how Loston will incorporate into a live setting the creativity he uses to remix in his bedroom. It’s an issue that many electronic artists confront. But the energy that Loston pumps into songs is undeniable, regardless of whether or not you consider his sort of musicianship legitimate. 

 

Caroline McDonald

Caroline McDonald

My first memory is of singing Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You” quietly to myself during preschool naptime. Perhaps it’s because I’m from Nashville where an instrument lives in every home, but music has gripped me for as long as I can remember.

After dabbling in many parts of the music industry—recording studios, PR, management, labels, publishing—I’m expanding into music journalism because I’m yet to find anything more rewarding that finding and sharing new music.

A longtime sucker for girls with guitars, my musical taste unabashedly follows the songwriting lineage of Dolly Parton and includes Patty Griffin, Gillian Welch, and Neko Case. But not to pigeonhole myself, my music love is big love that stretches from R.L. Burnside to Animal Collective to Lord Huron.

I’ve recently moved home to Nashville after living in Boston and Big Sur for several years. I’d forgotten how music pours onto the streets ten hours a day, seven days a week. I’m honored to share the creative explosion happening here. If your band is in the area or of the area, please reach out!
Caroline McDonald

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