LA Priest is the solo work of Sam Eastgate, the former singer of nu-rave revolutionary Late Of The Pier.

Signed to Domino Records, the maverick musician thrilled listeners when he pushed boundaries with debut album Inji. He continued his forays into strange and wonderful sonic outer limits by building his very one bespoke drum machine which he named GENE, leading to the title of his second record.

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Artist Bio

Sam Eastgate has always had maverick tendencies, but with GENE, his second album as LA Priest, he’s come up with his most inspired invention yet.

Arriving four years after the iconoclast variously known as Sam Dust, LA PRIEST and La Priest thrilled the world with the cosmic pop of his debut album Inji, his first LP for Domino and his first solo output following the disbanding of former outfit, Late Of The Pier. GENE also follows the 2016 project Soft Hair, in which Sam teamed up with Connan Mockasin for an instant cult-classic album.

GENE, the album, is named after a brand new analog drum machine Sam dreamt up and built alone. Working in isolation for more than two years, soldering iron in hand, Sam developed the inners of GENE using dozens of electrical circuits he made up himself. Its unique rhythmic patterns are the focal point for the album, which is coloured by lush, pastoral tones. Where before there were traces of the far out stylings of Late Of The Pier, the band that made his name, Aphex Twin and Ariel Pink, now there are shades of Arthur Russell, Prince and even Radiohead.

You’ll see the machine before you hear it, nestled on a bed of moss on the album’s sleeve. Enchanted by the orange-flowering Hawkweed growing near his home in deepest Wales, Sam filled his garden shed with the moss, feeling compelled to cultivate it.

This intensity of purpose defines the album. GENE is defined by the new avenues Sam’s drum machine allowed him to explore and the solitary environment in which he made it, as he travelled between Wales, Northern California and England’s south coast. The isolation is palpable. The machine creates an addled, emotive sound, songs twist and turn, anchored by fat, oozing rhythms rich in texture. The product of clear-eyed focus, the record offers a one-way ticket into a dimension entirely of Sam’s own making.

Sam achieved instant cult hero status when Late Of The Pier broke big, the band shining a light on his wandering talents. Bruised by hard touring and the record business, he began to retreat, embracing a nomadic working style oblivious to space and time. Inji dropped in 2015, establishing his off-kilter pop sound as a force to behold. Soft Hair, his 2016 project with Connan Mockasin, was slinkier and more demure, now, GENE locks into an altogether different groove.

The spark first came on a crisp autumn day somewhere near the Welsh village of Llanfair Caereinion in October 2016. Sam retreated to his recording set-up after finishing the promo trail for Inji, and he was searching for a way to channel his latest inspirations into music. The problem was, the universe was yet to create an instrument that was up to the job.

“I was aimlessly wandering around, barely aware of where I was going, trying to come up with a way of building this thing,” Sam begins. “The moment I realised how to do it, I ran back home.”

Sam had built his own instruments before (there was a GENE prototype as far back as 2010, and Inji track ‘Gene Washes With His New Arm’ was named in its honour) but this time was different. He was searching for an alternative to the structured rigour of standard drum machines, he wanted to synthesise different sounds, change pitch and timing. What he built is about to pull listeners further into his mind than ever before, GENE makes rhythms that feel inhabitable; this is a record to set up camp in.

“I wanted to do the second album differently and I was faced with a problem,” he says. “I liked using drum machines, but the rhythms were always really strict. Building GENE took about six months, at the end of it I thought, ‘Wow, this is really something quite special.’ It’s something that’s never been made before. I crammed it full of things I hadn’t seen anywhere else. It was more useful than my other equipment, everything on this record is based around that machine. You have to hear it to get the full appreciation…”

Indeed, Sam says GENE has such a unique sound that, “When you put it with normal drums or drum machines, it’s in its own world, so it really takes you in another direction, which I think people are going to really love.”

The same is true of all Sam’s output so far, but GENE is the most complete realisation of his vision yet. These songs are on a quest for meaning, exploring the limits of their maker’s abilities. The result is a gripping, immersive listen.

Opening with the inescapable melody of ‘Beginning’, the record struts and sparkles into ‘Rubber Sky’, which Sam says is a “loner anthem” that celebrates his unique approach to making music and the success it’s brought him. The searching ‘What Moves’ finds the narrator questioning the motivation behind the choices they make. Then comes the melancholic interlude of ‘Sudden Thing’ and the ginormous noise of centerpiece ‘Monochrome’. Sam says fans will spot the “traditional love songs” but, as usual, the lyrics are abstract, his words dictated by the music.

The crunch and texture conjured by GENE are assisted by keyboards, guitar and, every so often, live drums, and the final third takes a sharp turn towards something darker, more mystical. During the largely instrumental suite of ‘Kissing Of The Weeds’, ‘Black Smoke’ and ‘Ain’t No Love Affair’, rhythms gyrate, melodies hiss and gurgle.

A creaking wooden house that was once a doctor’s surgery in the Californian mountains was home for a year, following the aforementioned Welsh ramble. The heating was on the blink, faulty electrics led to the hum you can hear on vast swathes of GENE. Another part of the record’s geographic roots are linked to the south coast of England. The coastal location meant that the sound of the sea, rain and thunderstorms made their way onto the album too: Sam wants you to live in GENE as he did.

For the three years it took to make the album, he didn’t listen to any other music. This allowed him to step into another dimension. “A symptom of not listening to anybody else’s music is that you’re heart rate is a lot slower, your brain’s running at a different speed,” says Sam, revealing that he sped up some of the songs as the record grew.

As always with Sam, lyrics came last, words crafted from the vocal sounds he’d laid down initially.

“It’s more valuable to let the songwriting teach you something, rather than trying to deliver a message or contrive something,” he says. “When you’re more open, you’re going to learn more about the world around you and have the song say something about that, rather than just about yourself.”

As ever with LA Priest, there’s no such thing as predictable.
“With every record I’ve made, people don’t listen and know how their next 40 minutes will go,” he says, simply. “It’s more like, ‘I want this to take me wherever it wants to.’ People really have to go for the ride…”

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