When you first listen to lavender’s music, it's difficult to decipher what decade each song belongs to and whether it was excavated before the turn of the century or in the past year. That’s where the beauty lies in the North London-duo’s eclectic project, the tracks paying homage to eras of different genres spanning from disco, jazz, hip hop, and electronic. While they currently only have two singles out, which have accumulated two million streams on Spotify, a subtle flex, Oskar and Adam began collaborating musically when they first met in high school years prior.
Lavender, like fellow UK-house duo Disclosure and genre-spanning producer Kaytranada, have no hesitation putting out a mixed batch of tracks that feature their vocals, collaborations with other vocalists, or production-exclusive, which feature no vocals. Today, lavender released a new single “constantly” which happens to be one of their collaborations and features Chrissy, another UK-native. The production is sexy, hook accented with CHRISSY’s classical sultry vocals, R&B loop layered with steamy electric piano… how could anybody resist this sound.
The duo has certainly made the most of the UK's shelter-in-place order, by not only debuting their project back in July but continuing to crank out new tracks and collaborations in more intimate session settings. The “living room” has been a creative haven for the production and writing process that will soon be exhibited to fans. The pandemic gives lavender time to mentally prepare for a massive 2021 but in the meantime, they have some more singles to share, an EP coming out early next year, and are conceptualizing the live show experience.
I sat down with Oskar and Adam to learn more about the duo came into fruition, lavender’s “signature sounds,” and the behind-the-scenes making of the new single “constantly”.
How did the lavender project begin? When did it click for you two to collaborate and start making music together?
Oskar: We first met in high school, but we didn’t hang out a lot at school. We always say we weren’t mates but it’s because we were on different sides of the school. When we left school I always used to DJ house parties and Adam knew I was into music production from that.
Adam: I was in an indie band, indie/folk/pop, at school, and the year after we left school we wanted to record an EP. I thought ‘oh Oskar, he’s got Ableton’ so I hit him up and asked if he would be down to collaborate.
Oskar: A couple of years later, our friend and current manager Casper, shout out Casper, had a studio space in South London that a friend of his owned but wasn’t using. He offered the studio out for free but I told him I didn’t need that studio all for myself but I thought I could always hit up Adam because we had talked about collaborated and it kind of started from there
Of all the colors and plants out there, how did you come up with the name lavender, and how does it represent the music?
Adam: We were batting around names for a while. Then the idea of something along the lines of Lavender came from our friend, Nathan, I had sent him some early beats that we cooked up. We were out at the pub and he was trying to describe it to his friends. He described it as a mix of hip hop, and I was hearing a flowered shirt, and his shirt. I said that to our manager then I think it was he who really came up with the name lavender.
Oskar: When Casper started managing us, he said we need a WhatsApp group message what are we calling it? We said, ‘we don’t really have a name’, so he followed up with well what are some of the names you’re throwing around and we said Lavender is the one we are closest to is “lavender”. He’s like ‘ok I’m calling it lavender’ and then we never changed it and the music then for us began to fit lavender a bit more and you kind of grow into it over time.
Your debut single “peppermint” came out in July and has since accumulated over one and a half million streams and been added to Chill Vibes and Lorem. Walk me through the creative process of this song and your expectations while it was in the making?
Oskar: We talked about this before we released it. There’s this thing on Spotify where it says 1,000 plays and if you don’t have enough plays it says less than 1,000. The ambition for us was to at least get above 1,000 so that it wouldn’t look so sad. For that track, I made the beat on the train to the studio, and the only time we could get into a studio was between 10:00pm and 4:00am. We met at the studio and started building layers and layers on top of it.
Adam: “We also made it super quick, we tweaked it since, but we got down most of the track in a couple of hours. It’s something about the late-night sessions in that studio and being the only ones there, it was just a natural feeling. All our favorite tracks have stumbled out and it’s like we make exactly what we want to hear at that moment. The beat was so fresh and so optimistic, and it all tumbled out in a couple of hours.”
The production style is quite the breath of fresh air, the music feels nostalgic yet fresh. Does production come first for you guys then vocals, or how are these songs pieced together?
Oskar: I think the early stuff is production first purely because I made the beats and Adam adds to them. There haven’t been any track ideas that have started with a vocal.
Adam: From my perspective, my singing is not the biggest thing in lavender. I’ll only sing on a few tracks if it feels right. I sang on the first two singles. The vocals come in slightly later and we will both sit and add the textural and melody layers. We both love to layer stuff and the tracks come together from a loop going or a vibe and adding as much stuff as we want to sound right. We work with a lot of other vocalists as well because my voice can’t do all of our tracks justice.
In both singles out, there are a couple of tempo switch-ups throughout the songs. Would you call that the “lavender signature” that fans should look out for in all your upcoming releases?
Oskar: I really love this question because typically in indie music tempo changes aren’t that uncommon but in hip-hop, they typically are. Production-wise it was something that we were trying to push a boundary with for ourselves. The tempo changes have been received well in some places but not others (my mom).
Adam: There are several things for us that we kind of just because we do it on every track, we do are signature things for us, but we don’t do it for every single track. Some tracks are more glitchy, but we will dip into it if we feel like it’s right for the track
If your sound was birthed from two artists: one artist from the pre-2000’s and one artist from the past five years, who would they be?
Both: We love this question as well. For the pre-2000’s, we would choose J Dilla and we want to say Bon Iver but I feel like that’s to cliché for us to say. So, the lavender baby would be J Dilla and Bon Iver.
Let’s talk about the new single “constantly”, the song seems pretty timely given that life feels like a loop and we are “constantly stuck in a state of mind”. How did you and UK-singer CHRISSY conceptualize this song and piece this one together?
Adam: The song was actually quite an old song. It is one of the first songs we put together for the EP and we made most of the beat in advance. We got connected because I saw CHRISSY at a SoFar show the night before and we had a session booked in with another vocalist the next day who bailed a couple of hours before. I hit CHRISSY up and asked if she was around and wanted to swing by a session. She came by and played a few of the beats we had in mind but we both thought she would sound good on this beat. We played that for her said ‘this is a bit of me’. She sat and wrote, it was incredible, we had it on loop and had a couple guitars and was just tapping away at her phone and after 5 minutes was like ‘boom first verse’ then was like ‘ooh got a chorus’ and she just wrote the whole thing a half an hour.
Where is the ideal setting for listeners to post up and listen to this jazzy, R&B bop in?
Oskar: If you listen to it on your own and have recently broken up with someone then you might start crying but if you listen to it with a mate, then you’ll be like ‘ah really good vibes’ so we recommend listening with mates.
Adam: It’s a nighttime track, it has that haziness to it that’s a warm and nostalgic feeling. Another setting would be driving through the city at night.
As opposed to the previous two singles, the only vocals of yours are backup vocals. Are future releases going to be a mixed batch of collaborations with backing vocals and singles featuring lead vocals from you?
Adam: It’s going to be a mix. We both love working with vocalists because we both when we are making a track get excited about who we could hear on it. We think about what would be cool with this a certain kind of vocalist, either a specific artist or a specific vibe. Usually, if I’m singing on it, that happens in the session. I don’t consider myself a singer in this project. The vocals I usually offer start off being textural. It’s other instruments it’s not actually me singing over a track.
Oskar: That’s an influence that comes from Bon Iver the way he layers vocals and processes them to be part of a track. We love working with other vocalists because it helps to highlight our influences on the projects. This one has an R&B feel and the next one has an indie feel. We also love the idea of keeping tracks just as lavender so it feels more contained.
Adam: We would like the signature style to always be different from the last song and you can see a thread that connects them. We love to push the envelope and pursue different sounds.
What can fans look forward to next from “lavender”?
Oskar: We are putting together videos for the tracks that are out. We’ve been locked down and away from the studio for six months now, so we’ve been doing sessions in living rooms. We’ve been playing around with some covers that are coming soon. There also is an EP coming early next year. From a live show perspective, when those become a thing, we are buzzed to introduce people to the “lavender live show experience”. We’ve been working on the live show a lot during the lockdown. We want to make the live show different from what’s on record.
Adam: If you’re a fan of lavender, we are making it so people say you have to see them live. We are going to have live edit and extended tracks and working out the best way to make it engage live (with incense) with crazy visuals.
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