The End of the Beginning: Producer Koreless in Interview

Getting to grips with the concept of ‘Yūgen’ is a profoundly futile task – profound in that the difficulty one might have in grasping it shines more light on its true nature than words really can. Rooted in Japanese aesthetics, it posits that there is much within our world that we cannot name; emotions experienced only in dreams, pleasures derived from the stale and mundane, heartache on the night-bus – these are the prompts that might drive us towards a meaningful understanding of the concept, if only for a few fleeting moments, before resuming our mad scrabbling in darker recesses. They are subtle beauties that can only be vaguely hinted at.

Koreless (AKA Lewis Roberts) seems fully aware that Yūgen, his new EP on Young Turks, might be asking a lot of its listeners. “It’s hard to say,” he responds when pushed for a definition. “It’ll all become clearer over time though. This is something I’ve wanted to do for ages.”

Certainly he’s kept us waiting for a while. Having come up like so many through the internet’s de-centred channels, it’s now been over two years since the release of 4D/MTI on Pictures Music, a playful, two-step infused release which rode a wave that’s been throwing a genre-fixated press off tempo since day one (illustrated best by the release prompting The Independent to warn James Blake to ‘watch [his] back, there’s a new minimal dubstep star on the scene!’) Since then, we’ve seen a single on Jacques Greene’s Vase label, and some collaborative work with fellow producer Sampha under the moniker of Short Stories, but nothing in the way of a larger, cohesive effort. So why the wait?

“I just wanted to get away from doing the same stuff,” explains Roberts. “I mean 4D/MTI and everything I’ve released so far has been pretty pigeonholed in that messy, house-but-not-quite-house sound. I really wanted to put some distance between myself and all of that, so I tried not to make any music for a while. I felt like this was very necessary. There was a period where I just felt nothing I was doing sounded very good. I took a break, played a load of shows, and eventually figured out the concepts behind the EP and the work that needed to be done around the end of last year – in fact it came together really quickly, less than a month maybe. It was just reaching that point that took so long.  So this is something new – a different approach.”

He’s not wrong. Yūgen is a primarily beatless affair, and while its five tracks are littered with elements that have characterised previous releases, there is no ignoring the almost unsettling conclusions that Roberts’ minimalist tendencies have brought him to, logical though they may be. Somehow, Yūgen is both a record of alarming sparseness and satisfying richness; of arresting stillness and weighted movement. The combination of chopped vocals and warm synthwork, weaving its way through the spaces intentionally left blank, paints for us a surface world onto which Roberts projects radiant structures that obscure the depth that lies beneath. Yūgen feels part of a much larger, multi-disciplinary work, and one can only wonder what Roberts means when he claims that all will become clearer over time.

That’s not to say it doesn’t work as a stand-alone record. It does. It’s a wonderfully coherent work – following in a comparable vein to fellow innovator Production Unit’s 2012 release There Are No Shortcuts in a Grid System, Roberts utilises similar, occasionally identical sounds and motifs throughout the record. “There’s a few tracks working around the same theme, Sun and No Sun share a theme for example, except one’s backwards. I wasn’t keen on putting out five completely different tracks. I enjoy the way a band comes together using the same instruments to put out four different tracks, so it’s an attempt to bring that out in electronic instrumentation – the same sound, used in different ways.” In an age where so much is available to producers, this kind of restraint is both provocative and refreshing.

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“I was reading a lot of JG Ballard, all that weird sci-fi stuff. I can definitely see imagery from that having seeped into the sound” – Lewis Roberts aka Koreless

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Yūgen will definitely come as something of a relief to many. While the original explosion of forward-thinking bass music undoubtedly instilled UK and worldwide clubbing with a fresh sense of urgency, later efforts lost their charm, and were accompanied by a growing unease around the tools that made it all possible in the first place – could anyone with a cracked copy of Ableton and a couple of hundred Twitter followers really be a producer? Via Yūgen, Koreless has emerged unscathed from this dangerous landscape. The record’s well-crafted ambience, inevitably imbued with hints of Tangerine Dream and early Kraftwerk, takes us to sullen rooms equipped with ancient oscillators, full synth set-ups and ten-tonne tape decks. Whether Roberts did the EP on a laptop or not is irrelevant – Yūgen carries serious weight, the kind that requires isolation. Tellingly, when quizzed on what he was listening to when the EP was coming together, Roberts draws a blank. Visual influences get a better response – “I was reading a lot of JG Ballard, all that weird sci-fi stuff. I can definitely see imagery from that having seeped into the sound.”

Originally from Bangor in North Wales, Koreless was up until very recently a denizen of Glasgow, involved with the likes of LuckyMe, Numbers, and All Caps. “The Glasgow club scene is amazing; it’s a real special group of people. For better or worse, it’s the same bunch at every night, and the same crowds packing out the place, like a little family.” Roberts is by no means the first to speculate thus on what makes the Glasgow club scene the delightful little pressure cooker it is, but he speaks of it with an enthusiasm that suggests there are things happening in Glasgow that do not happen anywhere else – “They really know what they’re talking about, it’s a vibe I’ve never seen anywhere else, even being down in London, or anywhere else in the world for that matter. It’s in its own little world and for that reason it just doesn’t care.”

This month Roberts will be returning to Chambre 69’s temporary home Make Do for the Vase Label Showcase, performing live alongside the analogue-heavy Jacques Greene. “Until now the live shows have been fairly simple,” he admits, “all based on re-working things in a live setting using MIDI controllers and so on. But now I’m in rehearsals for a full live show – full keys, full synths, maybe some modular stuff. We’ve got a live kalimba to play some of the riffs with, it sounds so poppy. I’ve enjoyed what I’ve done up until now, and I wouldn’t go as far as to say it’s cheating, but you definitely feel a bit detached from everyone when you’re playing stuff off a launchpad, so it’s gonna be nice to try and share more of a connection with the audience. That emphasis on performance is something I’m keen to cultivate – I want vocals, and I’m toying with the idea of involving some other performers maybe. It’s a work in progress! It’s definitely going to be complicated. These things are always growing, always changing.”

As befits the complexity of a record like Yūgen, and perhaps Koreless’s whole approach, the label night promises a fully bespoke production and staging setup, taking its cue from a recognisable movement that’s forcing club-goers into more immersive, exploratory territory.