Lava La Rue, psychedelic space aliens and the exploration of identity

In 2017, the West London-born artist released the audio/visual narrative project LAVALAND PART 1, complete with a track titled “DYKELAND”. That project, alongside plenty of other queer visionary paragons over the past eight years, has built a solid yet versatile foundation for Lava La Rue to now confidently and defiantly release their long awaited debut album, STARFACE.

STARFACE is a concept album, featuring an eponymous lead character who is “a genderfluid psychedelic musical space alien, sent to planet Earth to understand why humans are so self-destructive”, in La Rue’s own words, falling in love with a human girl along the way and “becoming self-destructive in their own travels”.

“I wanted to have multiple narratives going,” La Rue tells me from their label’s offices in London, musing on the reason behind choosing a concept album as their debut. “I wanted to have a larger-than-life storyline, [where] people can interpret their own meaning, and then there's also my actual personal meaning behind the project [which] allowed some separation.”

That much is true for STARFACE. It's a record that feels explosively fantastical, whilst remaining deep-rooted in very intimate and personal topics excavating humanity and identity. “I really poured my heart out into how I'm feeling about the world, about relationships, about myself,” they share. The venture was, in some ways, informed by the time in which it was written, as the world was coming out of lockdown. “A lot of music then was very instantaneous, bedroom-like; short, two-minute songs,” La Rue explains. “I thought that was really cool, but it made me want to do the opposite. I want it to be larger than life, this big fantasy to escape to and be a bit nerdy with.”

STARFACE is a character La Rue, real name Ava Laurel, started becoming on stage, finding themselves slipping into their shoes whilst musing on the storyline over the years. It’s intrinsically linked to La Rue’s exploration of their identity - “I think a lot of people came out of the pandemic, like, wait, how do I dress now? Are these clothes still relevant to me? I was just leaning into how I wanted to dress as a performer.”

La Rue admires fellow genderfluid artists like Prince and Bowie, particularly for how their gender identity was presented on stage. “I wanted to create something a bit ambiguous and kind of psychedelic”, they tell me, going on to also cite more contemporary inspirations including Yves Tumor, Steve Lacy and Andre 3000. “There are people who have explored it without having to be so on the nose. In those last examples, their blackness and cultural identity is also mixed in, which is its own conversation.”

The debut album marks La Rue’s first material released on cult label Dirty Hit, “It's been cool,” they say of the journey so far, “I really like my team. I just got really lucky, I got all the cool cats at the cool label. I feel more supported, I’ve had more creative freedom because I come up with an idea and then I have more people to bat off [who say I] should push that further. You can tell by their roster that all their artists really lead with creativity and have such a strong identity. I think you need to have that for the dynamic to work. You have to come with that first - this is the way I am, this is what I represent, this is the subculture I’m part of.”

A venturesome composite, STARFACE traverses alternative rock, psychedelia and hip hop, a hedonistic amalgamation evocative of the music they grew up on. “The first girl I ever had a crush on was big into bands and Kerrang Magazine, like My Chemical Romance, Fall Out Boy, Paramore. Nobody else in our class was really into that shit. She didn't like me to begin with and bullied me a little bit, [but] I got into those bands so I could have a way to connect and become friends, and it worked.”

“I then just ended up actually falling in love with the genre and the music and discovering even more,” they explain. “My mum is a British Caribbean woman, but she was really into Skunk Anansie big time, so there was a bit of alternative music. I could see what it was like to be Black and be rock or nu-metal.”

At the same time as being “part of the generation where Linkin Park was on MTV as you were leaving to go to school”, La Rue was also delving into the hip hop worlds connected to their West London neighbourhood in Ladbroke Grove, and North West London where they went to school. “When I was in school, grime was really big, people would go out to parties and that’s what'd be playing. Having cyphers was a really big thing. I started rapping because I could in the playgrounds - people would just spit bars and I’d join in, and we'd go to an illegal rave, someone will pass you the mic and you’ll just start emceeing over the song.”

“It just so happened that when I dropped songs on Soundcloud and I was leaning into that, that's what got attention first,” they say, “but it was funny because I was also playing in bands before that. It’s all a mixture. On the album you can hear all of those roots come together.”

STARFACE brims with collaborations too, a testament to La Rue’s approach to music making, forging countless connections over the years. “It feels like I've taken a little piece of my favourite music from all around the world”, they tell me gleefully. The record boasts current artists like Bb Sway, Yunè Pinku, Audrey Nuna, Cuco and many others, alongside La Rue’s own collective NINE8. About that collaboration in particular, they reflect, “I dragged them all into the studio one day with a song that was produced by Isom Innis of Foster the People. So it's funny having my London kids on a tune that’s with this big psychedelic Nashville-born producer. It was a good juxtaposition.”

Above all, La Rue is looking forward to bringing STARFACE to the live sphere, where the character was born and where they are meant to live. “It's a record that was made to be performed as a proper show, for people to feel like they're immersed in it. Even though I've been around for a minute, and I started when I was a teenager, I really do feel like this is me drawing a line and doing serious music. I think I've just been trying things out up until now. This was me not trying things out anymore. This is me committing.”