Fresh Kicks 153: Lighght

Lighght’s Fresh Kicks mix is full of surprises: an Irish folk tune ripped from a Twitter video emerges from a behind shroud of smoky ambience and disjointed beats; an indie rock song about a missing dog contorts around a droning bed of electricity and distortion; an a capella of Sisqó’s ‘The Thong Song’ is warped and rewired to become a haunting mantra. These creative detours appear among lush experimental electronic tracks from the likes estoc, KMRU, Frog of Earth, Holland Andrews, Oneohtrix Point Never and more, woven together with a deft hand and an ear for subtle details. That it all works so well is testament to the Irish artist’s knack for contrast – for balancing light with dark, tenderness with irreverence, and the abstract with the energetic.

It’s a balance that’s found throughout Lighght’s own music too, across several albums and EPs that switch from electroacoustic ambience, spoken word and harsh noise into high-energy club music, deconstructed trance and beyond. Releases like 2019’s ‘Gore​-​Tex In The Club, Balenciaga Amongst The Shrubs’ and 2018’s ‘The Skin Falls Off The Body’ explore deeply personal themes, while the titles of 2020’s club-focussed EPs ‘Sorry I Can't Go Out Tonight, I'm Too Busy Going In’ and ‘They Are Just Bangers Bro, Please Don't Think Too Hard About It, Bro You Gotta Stop Thinking, Please Bro Come On’ speak for themselves, and point to an artist for whom variety is key.

“I think a Lighght track has a wide remit,” he says. “It’s my main alias and probably the least focused overall, which is a good and bad thing, but I can’t say I didn’t want it to be like that. Whenever I make music, despite how different one track might be from the next, I’m still confident it has my own sonic imprint - coloured by my own experience, and so I am confident it is mine. This is important to me.”

“I know nothing I’m doing is original in the sense it is connected to nothing else - rather my stuff is connected with everything I love. My music owes so much to past music and present music being made by my peers - my hope is that, despite all this, it is imbued with my own voice - and I think it is.”

Lighght’s most recent album, ‘Holy Endings’, on Doom Trip is his most tender work to date, and finds him stitching found sounds and field recordings through a tapestry of glowing electronic melodies, foggy atmospheres and intoxicating sound design. Notes Lighght made while making the album describe the act “translating a collected memory space - partially physical and partially digital - from real, lived moments to a shared collective memory made up of digital ephemera - photos, videos, sound snippets - into a new landscape of home”. The cultivation of these fragments into an immersive and beautiful collage of sound is a delicate art, and Lighght once again manages to find creative potential in unconventional places.

“I utilise the sound of badly done field recordings all the time,” he says. “Turning wind on the mic into warm sub bass, fidgeting hand holding the zoom becomes uneasy lines mapping weird sonic terrain, poor mic positioning casting blankets of distance on sound. If I’m with someone I don’t mind us chatting even if it covers up some sounds. if I’m on my own I might talk a bit anyway.”

It’s all a part of Lighght’s ever-developing process, which thrives on curiosity and experimentation. “I tend to make a lot of music - but some sessions might not be much actual songs. They might just be messing with a new process I want to try out - or fucking with some field recordings I took, or just trying to make a noise on some VSTs,” he says. It’s not something he’s too precious or secretive about either; he regularly posts video snippets of these studio experiments on Twitter, allowing for fun moments of insight into his echnique, which others may be less inclined to share. “I think a lot of these tools should be free,” he says. “It’s not sacred knowledge and I will happily share it with friends. I’m confident what they will make will take on their own perspective just as what I do has mine.”