Lokane (AKA Loz Caulton) is quickly cementing himself as a rising star in the London underground. Last year, the producer released his debut EP The Eastway Project on Infinite Machine with four club bangers towing the line between grime, Jersey club, and dancehall. Fellow Londoners Plastician, SBTRKT and Scratcha DVA have helped bolster the rising star’s reputation, throwing down his tracks on radio sets and in clubs across the UK. Lokane has offered a few mixes himself, including a “globe-trotting, schizophrenic” ON DECK mix for THUMP, as well as guest sets on Rinse FM and Boiler Room.
Now Nervous Horizon label heads TSVI and Wallwork have tapped Lokane for his his next release, Visions EP. The six-tracker (plus a digital-only bonus remix from TSVI) show Lokane taking his sound to the next level, distilling his eclectic and energetic style into a positively-banging set of dancefloor bombs. The highlight of the release is the vinyl-only cut “In The Trap,” where the producer takes a stuttering Nicki Minaj sample (hint: it’s not what you think) and builds one of the most explosive tracks you’ll hear all year. You’ll have to buy the 12″ to wear this one out.
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On top of streaming the Visions EP, we also caught up with Lokane over email, asking the producer about his formative years in the London scene, his relationship with Nervous Horizon, and his plans for the future.
THUMP: Where did you grow up, what’s your connection to London’s current grime/club music scene? Who were some pivotal DJs, labels, or parties that shaped your current sound?
Lokane: I grew up in Watford and St. Albans, in Hertfordshire just outside London. Both St. Albans and London definitely sparked my interests in music from an early age. At 16, my pals and me were heavily into the dubstep scene. We often made trips to Leeds to catch the Exodus DMZ and Subdub parties at the West Indian Centre. That place was the holy sanctuary of dubstep. Later on I began to fall out with the whole scene and started listening to the sounds that Night Slugs and Swamp81 were putting out. All these parties and labels definitely influenced my productions early on. Within the last three years I’ve chosen to step it up, take it to a different level and just write tracks that can’t be restricted by genres.
How did you come up with the title for your EP, Visions? Did you have a concept in mind when making this EP?
“Visions” was the name of a track I made with a sample taken from Skepta’s Noisey documentary, “Top Boy.” He chats about “shaking shit about,” how that’s the stuff that people will remember and how it will change the game, so I based it off that. I guess you could say in a way my vision is to ‘change the game’ in some way or another. I never really had a concept for the EP either, I just wanted to write some stuff that was so different, and people would listen to it in a club and think “what the fuck is that”‘… in a good way of course.
Tell me about the sample on “In the Trap.” It’s instantly recognizable as the beginning of Nicki Minaj’s verse in Drake’s “Make Me Proud,” not “Beez in the Trap” like the title suggests. Did you build the track around the sample or the other way around? What do you think it added to the track?
I made “In The Trap” in 2013 when I was shamelessly listening to Drake a lot. I stumbled across the opening of Nicki’s verse on “Make Me Proud,” which was completely free of any drums or other elements. I sampled that and built the track around it and It just worked really well. With the sample being so catchy, I knew it would go off in the club and people would instantly remember it.
How did you link up with TSVI and Wallwork? Can you talk about your relationship to Nervous Horizon and how your music fit in with this label?
I first got friendly with TSVI and Wallwork when they hit up me over SoundCloud in 2014. At the time I hadn’t released any music. I’d never heard of them before, but I instantly loved what they were doing. It was great that we had that common interest in the scene, and the style of music we were making was pushing boundaries in a similar way. It worked out perfectly for me to grow and develop a new sound with a collective of like minded and talented producers. Now as a family, Nervous Horizon has come a long way, with so much more exciting things to come in the future.
What’s up next in 2016? Anything exciting coming up that you can share with us?
March will be a great month. Visions EP will be out on the 4th of March, which I’m really excited for. I’ve also got a remix of Scratcha DVA & Addison Groove’s “All Y’all Records” coming out on Hyperdub later this month too. I’ll be making my BBC Radio 1 debut towards the end of the month, on Annie Nightingale’s show, which is also going to be fun. As for 2016, I’m just excited to start writing some new material and playing more shows with the team. The label has a lot of exciting projects coming up so I know 2016 is going to be a great year.
Tracklist:
1. Visions
2. Body Double
3. Bomba
4. In The Trap (Vinyl Exclusive)
5. Overproof
6. In The Trap (DVA Soule Power Remix)
7. Body Double (Tsvi Remix) (Digital Bonus)
