Son Lux

Son Lux originated as Ryan Lott’s post-rock endeavor centered on his roles as composer, keyboardist, and vocalist, before expanding throughout the 2010s via the inclusion of guitarist/composer Rafiq Bhatia and experimental drummer Ian Chang. The ensemble fuses live instruments with computer-processed acoustic takes, samples, and Lott’s strained vocals to produce a daring, dystopic texture frequently matched to uneasy lyrics envisioning a threatening tomorrow. Those foundations emerged with the unconventional first album At War with Walls & Mazes in 2008; the 2013 release Lanterns then stood out further by supplying songs later covered by Lorde and sampled by Fall Out Boy. Bones from 2015 became the initial Lott-Bhatia-Chang collaboration and registered the project’s first appearance inside the Top Ten of Billboard’s dance/electronic albums chart. The band’s sixth album constituted the three-part conceptual series Tomorrows, whose final segment appeared in 2021 and preceded their Academy Award-nominated soundtrack for the acclaimed indie film Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022).

Lott, the youngest of three siblings, relocated repeatedly throughout his early years. Born in Denver, Colorado in 1979, he resided in California and Connecticut prior to settling in Atlanta for high school. Classical piano instruction began at age six; guitar followed, and in Georgia he added drums while exploring pop and jazz piano. During composition and piano studies at Indiana University, Lott first experimented with music for dance choreography. That direction persisted after graduation while he lived in Cleveland—where an arts grant supported work integrating his music with other media—and continued following his 2007 move to New York City for a composer position at an ad agency. There he sustained partnerships with the Gina Gibney Dance Company, an all-female modern dance ensemble.

Concurrently Lott advanced his solo output under the Son Lux name, constructing ethereal, nocturnal pieces from minute samples and his own voice that incorporated experimental rock, hip-hop rhythms, and electronica arrangements. A songwriting competition victory led to his debut performance under the new moniker at the Festival of Faith & Music in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he opened for artists including Emmylou Harris and Sufjan Stevens; soon afterward he performed in New York City and created remixes for Beirut and Castanets.

Anticon issued the debut album At War with Walls & Mazes in March 2008. For the second album Lott abandoned his customary deliberate pace upon accepting the 2011 RPM Challenge, requiring musicians to compose and record an entire album during February. Although At War with Walls & Mazes had required four years, he completed We Are Rising in 2011. Two years later he joined Joyful Noise and delivered Lanterns, further developing methods of digitally reshaping primarily acoustic recordings into an otherworldly, quasi-electronic result. In 2014 Lott contributed to Sisyphus, a collaboration with Sufjan Stevens and Serengeti, and issued the Son Lux EP Alternate Worlds, which reimagined Lanterns material and featured New Zealand pop star Lorde, who had already performed “Easy” in concert. Lanterns’ “Lost It to Trying” supplied the prominent sample for Fall Out Boy’s “Fourth of July” on their chart-topping American Beauty/American Psycho album released early in 2015.

After intermittent touring, frequently solo, Lott formed a consistent touring trio to support Lanterns; the rapport proved strong enough that Lott, Bhatia, and Chang jointly composed and recorded the fourth album. Bones appeared on Glassnote Records in June 2015. Written during the week of the 2016 U.S. presidential election, the same trio issued the EP Remedy in May 2017, incorporating a crowdsourced choir exceeding 300 voices.

City Slang released Brighter Wounds in 2018. The more intimate album, shaped by both bereavement and the arrival of Lott’s first child, included guests such as the chamber sextet yMusic and trumpeter Dave Douglas. The companion EP Yesterday’s Wake, also from 2018, recast several of the album’s motifs. Labor, issued in 2019, gathered instrumental and alternate versions of Brighter Wounds tracks. Remnants (Joyful Noise), another 2019 release, compiled rarities, previously unreleased songs, and outtakes spanning 2008 to 2017. Reincarnates, an EP from May 2020, assembled further unreleased items including a live rendition of “Alternative World” and the original track “DBML” featuring Chris Thile. Son Lux additionally reworked two earlier songs with singer and interview subject Bonnie Piesse for the HBO documentary series The Vow; one of them, “Dream State (Brighter Night),” became the theme.

City Slang issued Tomorrows I in August 2020. Responding to climate change, widening inequality, the COVID-19 pandemic, and widespread political protests, the album presented songs and instrumentals organized around “imbalance, disruption, collision, redefinition,” with contributions from a string quartet and vocalist Kadhja Bonet. The more streamlined, introspective Tomorrows II followed that December, succeeded by the arresting Tomorrows III in April 2021, which featured Bonet plus singers Holland Andrews and Kiah Victoria. Tomorrows Reworks appeared later that year, and the single “Gone,” a collaboration with Kimbra for the Netflix sci-fi animated series Eden, arrived in December.

The nearly two-hour soundtrack for the action-sci-fi-comedy-drama Everything Everywhere All at Once was released by A24 alongside the film in March 2022. Beyond its extended score, which integrated otherworldly sound effects into the musical fabric, the album contained songs with Randy Newman, Moses Sumney, and David Byrne, among additional guests. Son Lux later earned an Oscar nomination for Best Original Score—the first band so recognized in a score category since the Beatles received Best Original Song Score in 1971 for Let It Be—while Lott received a second nomination, shared with Byrne and Mitski, for the song “This Is a Life.”

The trio returned to Joyful Noise in 2023 with Alternate Forms, a track-by-track reinterpretation of 2013’s Lanterns. Each song incorporates at least one guest collaborator; contributors included Sound of Ceres, Kishi Bashi, and Ann B Savage, among nearly a dozen others.