INTRODUCING: Cor De Lux
Hailing from Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina, COR DE LUX merge alternative, dreampop, shoegaze, and post-punk stylings to create a hazy and beautiful melding of sounds. The band’s new album, Year Of The Horse, their first on new label Ipecac Recordings, is a perfect representation of these sonic vibes, and makes for a great soundtrack to the dying embers of summer days. We caught up with guitarist/vocalist Tim Lusk and guitarist/vocalist Dawn Moraga to get the lowdown on Year Of The Horse.
We get started by going back to the very beginning and hear how COR DE LUX started as band with Dawn explaining. “Tim owns a computer repair/cell phone store, and me and my friend went in there because she broke her phone, and he was repairing the screen, and we just started talking to him about music, and he mentioned SUNNY DAY REAL ESTATE and FUGAZI. He had a little recording studio set up, we started playing, just jamming one night, and realised that we had really good chemistry and it was like, ‘damn, let’s start a band’!”
Dawn continues, “we were thinking about a drummer, which was the hardest thing to find, as we live in a small beach town in North Carolina, that’s not like well known for a music scene but one of my friends was saying that this guy that I surf with, Dana, and that he’d probably want to play with us. So we went over there and jammed one night, and then it just kind of happened.”
With the new COR DE LUX album, Year Of The Horse, Dawn and Tim tell of their excitement of bringing the new record out, one that marks the exciting new start with new label Ipecac. Dawn begins, “it’s really crazy, and it’s even crazier to be with Ipecac. They are the some of the best out there. It was very shocking that that they were into us, in my opinion!”
With an album as strong as Year Of The Horse, Tim tells us just how excited he and Dawn get when holding a new album in their hands. “I don’t think that’ll ever change. If it does, I want someone to tell me that it did, so that I can brainwash myself to go back in time mentally when it was, because I love it. I used to do design work for albums and stuff, and I think I would be the type of person that would design something and sit there and stare at it!”
The band then go on to discuss the sound and outlook of Year Of The Horse. “I was going back and listening to stuff like UNWOUND, MINUTEMEN. Tim was listening to CORRIDOR.”
“Oh yeah, CORRIDOR, Definitely, with for the sound and the guitar playing and PROTONARTYR, most definitely was coming into the picture around that time. The OSEES. A lot of stuff you can’t help but absorb, pretty much anything that we were listening to.”
Dawn goes on to tell of a big change in the band while they were making their new record, a change that had a profound impact on the dynamics of the album. “We changed drummers after three songs in, and that was a huge thing. When he left, we had only written and recorded three songs, right, and then we didn’t do anything for five months.” Tim chimes, “we were already writing new stuff,” before Dawn continues, “a local band down here had recommended this guy Jacob, who I had known before, but he’s a jazz/session drummer and I just didn’t think he would be into or know any of the post-punk style stuff that we were into, but he brought something really special to the band because he had no idea about the style. He studied the songs.”
We finish off with the band talking about the sonics of Year Of The Horse and what the future holds for COR DE LUX. Dawn begins, “I would say with this album we’ve gotten a little bit more angstier than all of them, in my opinion. What I think is interesting is that people put us with heavy bands, hardcore bands, punk bands, and then then we play with indie rock bands, and people are having a hard time being like, ‘okay, are they shoegaze? Are they post-punk?’ So I think this newer stuff we’re writing, there’s a tinge of our song Ping Pong, where it’s mellow for a minute, some kind of math rock type stuff, but then it goes into something heavy, and I think that’s just what comes out naturally in the band room.” Tim concludes, “the dynamics are like a score for a movie, different emotions for different parts, different songs, we can pretty much have the freedom to do whatever we want!”
Year Of The Horse is out now via Ipecac Records. View this interview, alongside dozens of other killer bands, in glorious print magazine fashion in DS133 here.
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