To accompany the first release of 2025 and the fifth installment in his “Xenomorph” series, Void+1 presents an exclusive interview with Cam Lasky, an “entity” cloaked in greater mystery than the most enigmatic superhero.
VOID+1: Hello, Cam, and thank you for agreeing to this interview! Let’s start with the burning question that we hear most often when your name comes up: Who is Cam Lasky, and is there a specific reason for the air of mystery surrounding your persona?
Cam Lasky: Hi, Thank you, too. I’m very grateful for such a wonderful opportunity. I’ll start by answering your questions.
Cam Lasky is both my real name and my artist name. It is also a brand and an identity. Although I started out alone , it could become a group with multiple members, or someone else could take over the name after I am no longer able to work or have died. What is important is the worldview of the music, and I think that revealing my personal face and private life would fixate the character image and get in the way of continuing the artist name, so I’m wearing a mask.
VOID+1: Your creativity and production volume seem to be a subject of curiosity. How do you find the necessary time to achieve such an output? Since it was mentioned in your last interview, could you share some insight about your sleep cycle and how it affects your productivity?
You mean the interview two years ago?
Compared to those days, my sleeping hours have become overwhelmingly shorter. I’m getting about 3 to 4 hours of sleep a day.
I’m a short sleeper to begin with, so this is enough for me. The amount of time I spend sleeping has decreased, so I’ve increased the amount of time I spend on input. I mainly read, and reading novels, poetry, academic papers, and other genres I didn’t know about before has really stimulated my brain and helped me to improve my concentration and motivation for music production. I also think that things like my daily workout and walking the dog have contributed to improving my work.
VOID+1: Can you walk us through your production process from start to finish? What’s your typical workflow, and are there any unique rituals or habits that shape your approach?
The starting point for all my music is always a source original (novel or manga), and my production process begins with reading that original.
The workflow after that is as follows
1. Decide on a subgenre that matches the world view of the original. (industrial? minimal? etc.)
2. The original is divided to make up a series. (Should we make an EP for each original episode, or an album? etc.)
3. Decide what to focus on in the original work. (scenes? characters? gadgets? etc.)
4. Make a short theme suit. This is a sound sketch. make as many beat patterns, melody lines, chord progressions, scales, etc. as possible in a short time, from those that will be used in a single track to those that will be used multiple times in a series, in accordance with the focus of the original defined in 3 above.
5. Decide on the titles and concepts of the tracks to be included in each EP.
6. Create concept visuals for each track.
7. Decide sound image for each track based on the concept visual.
8. Decide structure of each track (what we call the track structure) (set in detail from intro, verse, drop, break to outro). This is a simple score sheet that fits on a single A4 paper.
9. Determine the key and scale of the track.
10. After attaching the theme suit created in 4., I play the rough beat on electronic drums and record it as MIDI data.
11. Based on the above, the structure and tone of each instrument are decided and recording is carried out. The important thing here is to make the phrases you play as short as possible (within 16 to 32 measures) and fit them into the structure like puzzle pieces. This has a big impact on the speed of production.
VOID+1: Each of the KWAIOTO EPs features a wide range of credits. This implies that your process is highly collaborative and that you work with a team. Could you elaborate on the steps your music goes through and how this collaborative environment influences the final product?
My production process is modeled on the style of Japanese manga artists. As you know, commercial manga is produced through a system of division of labor, and the same is true of Cam Lasky. My team consists of 2 co-producers who are like editors for manga artists, 1 sound director, 1 manipulator, and 2 visualists.
The manipulator’s role is to clean up and refine the rough recordings I’ve made, and to retouch the sounds of synthesizers and other instruments. Workflows 1 to 7 take several weeks (pre-production) or even several months to prepare. This makes it possible to complete workflows 8 to the final product for delivery to the DSP in 2 to 3 hours.
VOID+1: You’ve mentioned recording drums live as the catalyst for your tracks. Do you have a background as a drummer, or is this a skill you picked up when you started producing electronic music?
I was studying composition at university, but I also had a skill as a drummer and percussionist, and my research topic was “the origins of rhythm”. For this reason, I collected rhythms and musical instruments from various regions of Africa, South America and Asia. I moved to Kyoto to study the “Ohayashi” beat, which has been handed down in Kyoto for over 1000 years, for use in festivals.
VOID+1: We are utter movie geeks, so we’re kind of making it a tradition to ask movie-related questions in these interviews. Please tell us: what are your favorite movies? How about you give us a top 3 of all time and a top 3 from the last 5 years?
That’s a fun question. I was just wrapping things up.
All Time Top 3
Last 5 Years Top 3
VOID+1: Your tracks always have a cinematic feel to them. Do you have any professional experience in cinema, or is this just a reflection of your vast interests?
I’m not going to go into detail, but I’ve been in this profession for a long time.
VOID+1: In a time when most producers fall into the trap of adapting to the market in the hope of getting the crumbs of a stale cake, you are one of the very few artists who evades the imposed game. You’re an artist whose style radiates personality and can hardly even be defined. How important is individuality and unfiltered expression to you?
I’m just pursuing what I want to listen to, so I don’t really think about it. But the advice of Scalameriya, who introduced me to the world of techno, was also a big influence. That’s right. The new series of “Ghost in the Shell” that’s being released next month was made with a deliberate commercial approach. We all had fun making it, shouting and singing together.
I have loved minimal music ever since I learned about contemporary music composition techniques at university, and I hope to use these techniques in techno music one day. I want to create physis music that is like the living, music that Steve Reich is good at, where “a phrase or beat repeats itself over and over again, and before you know it, it has changed into a different form”. My current production style is structured logos music, but I try to arrange music like that as a study to get a little closer to physis music.
I wondered how interesting it would be to make a fictional Sci-Fi movie OST that combined his aggressive style with my own. Just imagining it made me excited.
And they have finally managed to turn William Gibson’s “Burning Chrome” (a short story that leads to Neuromancer), the founder of cyberpunk, into techno.
Since “Star Wars” (1977), the standard for Sci-Fi movie OSTs has been grand orchestration, but “The Matrix” (1999) changed that with its electro sound, but after a short time, it has returned to the standard orchestral sound. Now, more than ever, an aggressive, cinematic, epic techno masterpiece has been born that is worthy of a new sci-fi for a new era.
Studio View – Autumn 2024
Studio View – Winter 2024
Studio View – Summer 2024
I’m a big fan of Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979). Or rather, I’m a passionate fan of the “End Title” OST song by Jerry Goldsmith (which wasn’t used in the film).
The first record I bought with my allowance as a child was an EP that included this song. This theme suit saw the light of day in Jed Kursel’s new interpretation tune of the opening sequence of “Alien: Covenant (2017)”.
The reason I started the “XENOMORPH” series on KWAIOTO was because I wanted to remake this “End Title” myself. The first half of “Black Globules”, which was included in XENOMORPH Vol. 2, is that.
The original theme suit has been disassembled and embedded, so please listen to the three and compare them.
This “XENOMORPH” (I’ll call it Season 1) is based on the novelization of the script for “Aliens 3” by William Gibson, a Sci-Fi writer I admire, which was not used, and by Pat Cadigan, the queen of cyberpunk, who is also one of my favorite authors.
And I wanted to release “XENOMORPH: BISHOP”, which is based on the prequel “Aliens: Bishop” by T. R. Napper, on Void+1 as a way of repaying Scalameriya, who loves my “XENOMORPH” and often uses it in their live performances.
Furthermore, the “XENOMORPH” series is returning to KWAIOTO and being restarted as “XENOMORPH: ISOLATION”. The work is based on the game and novel released in 2015. This is the story of Ellen Ripley’s daughter Amanda Ripley’s journey to find her mother, 15 years after the disappearance of USCSS Nostromo.
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