De Lux

Drawing from the tail end of the 1970s and the opening years of the 1980s—an era that spawned post-punk and post-disco, along with numerous kindred spirits on the DFA roster such as LCD Soundsystem and Holy Ghost!—the Los Angeles-based duo De Lux unites Sean Guerin with Isaac Franco. They fuse classic dance rhythms and longstanding synthesizer textures into electronic-steeped grooves that still feel natural, with singing and words supplying a singular warmth. The pair were still shaping their identity on the 2014 debut album Voyage, yet they refined both their sound and their lyrical outlook on 2018’s More Disco Songs About Love while adopting a spontaneous production approach for 2022’s Do You Need a Release?, which they tracked live to tape alongside their touring musicians.

The two first surfaced from Los Angeles in late 2013 via a five-track EP issued through a ScionAV partnership. Fronted by “Better at Making Time,” the EP also included a Visitors remix (the alias of Liquid Liquid’s Sal Principato and Dennis Kane). De Lux delivered their debut album Voyage on Innovative Leisure in April 2014, mixing several new pieces with “Better at Making Time” and the earlier standout “Love Is a Phase.” Slightly more than a year afterward they returned with Generation, a darker collection shaped by the music of ESG and Can plus the unbound lyrics of Karen Finley. Renewing emphasis on steady rhythms and vocal melody, More Disco Songs About Love appeared in early 2018, again on Innovative Leisure. For their fourth album, 2022’s Do You Need a Release?, Guerin and Franco revised their methods by recording live in the studio with their road band rather than working alone, yielding a more organic result that amplified the pop inflections and brought stage-like tension and immediacy to the performances. Innovative Leisure released Do You Need a Release? in September 2022.