Pushing genre boundaries on LOIF's 'GHOSTWORLD'

LOIF (he/him) is a member of Australia’s next generation of musical stargazers, all too conscious of the emotion that comes from listening to and performing music on home soil. The DJ and producer was born and raised in Naarm/Melbourne. Over the last half a decade, he’s found his way onto some of the world’s most reputed left-field labels, including Animalia and Amniote Editions. While his city-based upbringing may not lead him to total immersion in Australia’s bush, like many artists operating in less commercially focused musical spaces, so much of what LOIF does is to pay respect to the culture, people and places that have helped to shape and inspire him.

‘GHOSTWORLD’ is LOIF’s debut album, a 9-track release via Naarm’s beloved label and event series, Steeplejack.

As LOIF, real name Declan Vadasz, prepares to release his biggest project to date, it’s clear how proud he is of the work he and his various collaborators have put into it. For LOIF, this confidence and excitement isn’t about him as much as it is about honouring the people, places, and culture that’s gotten him this far.

“When Harrison asks me to do something, I can't say no,” he explained. Declan sat at the desk of his home studio, a room littered with all manner of gig posters, knick-knacks, homemade instruments done by his friend Cal, and musical tech.

It was a room that was very well-used, loved and comfortable. He spends lots of time there, although he laments how close it is to where he sleeps, which happens to be in the room right next door.

Harrison (they/them) is the head of Steeplejack, also known as Harold. Steeplejack has long stood as a prominent zig to the rest of Naarm’s zag, beginning in 2012 as a series of events at now-defunct venues like The Mercat, Lounge and New Guernica.

The knowledge of a label’s function in promoting modern music has, in recent years, become all the more confusing. For more mainstream artists, this confusion has stemmed from the ‘churn and burn’ nature of many more prominent labels. For more grassroots artists, there is confusion about a label’s involvement when most music is only being distributed digitally.

For LOIF, Steeplejack is the entire reason that the release came to be and a crucial part of how it ultimately sounds and looks.

While Declan is now, in his own right, an incredibly revered producer and performer among Naarm & more excellent Australia’s more ‘underground’ scenes, his journey has been very much owing to Harrison and their work.

“Harrison and I would have met probably seven or eight years ago now,” he reflected.

“A story I often tell is how I first saw Harrison DJing at a Smalltown party years ago and was completely blown away with their set. They played after Kyle Hall or something like that at this big warehouse party. I was blown away by it. ‘Who the hell is this guy?’ I thought. Then, the next week, I was at New Guernica, and I saw them DJing in the kitchen, the little room upstairs, to no one. This took me aback because I thought they were some sort of musical prodigy. Seeing them in this completely different context the next week was strange.”

“Something I’ve always really appreciated about Steeplejack and Harrison as a whole,” Declan continued, “is the idea that it’s often fairly serious music but presented very tongue-in-cheek. It never takes itself too seriously. Those sorts of values, the openness and willingness to bring people into these communities, is something I’ve taken on myself.”

Not taking yourself too seriously has become a calling card for Steeplejack, with the promotion for LOIF’s album launch at beloved underground HQ Miscellania being a perfect example of that.

‘GHOSTWORLD’ hardly gives the image of a release chock-full of irony, but Declan’s focus on this facet of Steeplejack’s image makes it clear how deeply he appreciates the community he is a part of.

“It’s been nerve-wracking, you know, to do Steeplejack justice and Harrison justice as well,” he repeated.

‘GHOSTWORLD’ is a merging of what makes LOIF’s and Steeplejack’s sounds unique. The bass-heavy ambience of ‘As Above, So Below’, LOIF’s collaboration with Naarm-based vocalist Sina, the ‘tek’ of ‘Psycode’ with Bluhol, trance on ‘Voices In My Head’, breakbeat on ‘Ektoplazm’, and more traditional drum & bass on ‘I Believe You’, demonstrate that Declan is an artist with his ear in many places and talents across many genres. In melding all these sounds together, ‘GHOSTWORLD’ is in many ways the Naarm record, with any number of its sounds being something one could find at a trip-hop afternoon, bass night or psy-coded rave on the Yarra bend.

While producers making albums can often simply mean the implementation of lyrics and vocals, ‘GHOSTWORLD’ is still very firmly on the dance floor. Doing so in a consistent way, rather than an EP simply filled with ‘IDs’, was clearly on LOIF’s mind throughout the writing process. “How is this album going to be consistent?” he reflected. “I guess what I was looking for was a bit esoteric. Maybe a vibe or a consistency in melody. Melody runs through many of the tracks, but not like every track. I know that I wanted every track to feel very Steeplejack.

Another part of Harrison and Steeplejack, as a whole, is that there’s always this heightened level of emotion or drama. Yeah, sometimes it's silly, and sometimes it's stupid, but many people who have seen how old sets will tell you that they've cried. So I think the thing that ties everything together is this sense of emotion, and those emotions can be different for everyone.”

‘GHOSTWORLD’ is nothing if not emotional. Soothing and borderline spiritual vocals, dramatic drums, and euphoria-dripping build run through its almost hour-long run-time. Much like a DJ or live set, LOIF says he and Harrison were all too aware that the order in which tracks ran would be a crucial part of this emotional journey.

“…that was something that we thought about quite a bit, and I think that helps the way it's constructed. For me, it's almost as if it's like a DJ set. By taking all those different songs from different genres, but constructing them in a way where it felt like there was this rising and lowering of energy, I think that also helped to make them sit a bit better in the same album.”

While ‘GHOSTWORLD’ has been a long process, as Declan told me, spanning over four years of writing at different periods, the signature Steeplejack humour remains evident. Like many other producers of darker, more mysterious, intricately pieced-together electronic music, LOIF is incredibly easy-going, humorous, and friendly.

Though ‘GHOSTWORLD’ could, in many other instances, fit the name of a horrorcore rap mixtape or the seminal project of a local hardcore group, for LOIF, the name came to him in far more appropriate circumstances.

“I was actually at a kick-on in London, speaking to someone from Copenhagen, and they said they’d come up with a DJ name for another friend they didn’t end up using, called ‘Spooky Nation’.

So I asked them how they’d feel if I called my album that. They said, ‘Yeah, absolutely, as long as you credit me.’

At some point after that, ‘GHOSTWORLD’, for whatever reason, popped into my head. I thought that maybe this was a bit closer to what I’m thinking of, and it helps me hit the spooky, scary vibe I want most of the time.”

A listener outside of Naarm and Australia’s more incredible dance music culture could be forgiven for thinking that LOIF’s debut album is meant to intimidate or scare. In some ways, they’d be right. ‘GHOSTWORLD’s cup spills over with darkness in how its sounds are executed and seamlessly woven together. In reality, however, so much of what LOIF and this album represent is a snowball of inspiration and collaboration among Naarm’s ‘underground’ scenes and those found all over the globe.

“Get Me Off This Ride " started after seeing Woody92 for the first time at Worm Turns, set in the Victorian bush. It was a wonderful location, and mixed with very animalistic, hypnotic music, captured me in quite a big way.”

While in many ways, LOIF’s music is quite a solitary listening experience, with a brooding feeling across all of its nine tracks, collaboration has been an essential part of its process. Throughout our conversation, he regularly referred to the desire not to have him be ‘GHOSTWORLD’s sole contributor for fear “of being boring”.

Collaborating with the likes of sina, Nū and Bluhol, three artists whose circle of sound overlaps with LOIF's to varying degrees, is a process that brought a tremendous amount of joy and excitement. On a grander scale, Declan remarked that this collaboration, whether on this release or more broadly around Australia, is a massive part of what has created the ‘sound’ of Australia.

“What makes Australian music unique is our specific context and setting. We’re removed from everyone else, the fact that we have these scenes where there are enough people to bounce off, collaborate with, and support, and the connection to nature that we all share. What I enjoy about collaboration is seeing someone else’s way of interpreting something and then trying to follow it.”

Whether in the studio or on the dance floor, dance music is more often than not a collaborative effort. ‘GHOST WORLD’ channels the spirit of collaboration in many ways, perhaps most notably through its use of vocals.

The feeling shared between artist and listener, between dancers, and the almost indescribable space we share could be called something slightly spiritual. While ‘GHOSTWORLD’ lends itself to the idea of spirits, LOIF has clarified that his intention in working with sina and Nū on vocals was not to make it seem otherworldly.

“I don’t know if there was a specific intention to make something spiritual, but if that is one of the reactions it elicits, then I think that’s awesome. For me, it’s just having an instrument. Vocals are, in some ways, an instrument unique to the person I’m working with. Their voice carries their context and their own musical identity. That’s an exciting thing to inject into my music. It adds a lot of drama.”

While these collaborations on the EP come at a time when LOIF has spent more time and practice on his music than ever before, the desire to collaborate with vocalists is something he’s taken through his entire musical catalogue right from the start.

“On my first EP, I collaborated with my friend Athina, the lead singer of Gut Health. I was living with her then and working on a track for this EP, which was also my final project for my university course. She walked past, heard what I was walking on, and said, Ohh, can I do some vocals?’ Of course, I was like, ‘fuck yeah, let’s do this.’ I thought it was so cool working with someone in this way for my first true collaboration with another musician. It instilled in me this interest to work with vocalists.”

Like so many of his peers, LOIF pioneers a dark, gritty sound in some of our most social environments. It feels almost hypocritical that so much of ‘GHOSTWORLD’ will find itself played on dance floors filled with revelling friends, lovers and total strangers, but it will.

Events like Inner Varnika have, like many other Naarm locals, influenced LOIF’s interaction with music forevermore—an event, like many others, simultaneously vibrant and gritty. Fancy dress meets big sound systems; a good time meets a barren landscape.

Whether ‘GHOSTWORLD’ can truly take us to the world that LOIF has created is something he’s not sure is even possible.

“I’ve experienced it,” he said, “but I don’t know how to recreate that. If my music can do that, great, but I’m also not sure it’s powerful enough to pop it on and well, ‘suddenly I’m somewhere else’, you know?

But maybe, I mean, who’s to say.”

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'GHOSTWORLD' is available now via Steeplejack's Bandcamp.

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Jack Colquhoun is Mixmag ANZ's Managing Editor, find him on Instagram.