Shlohmo
LA-based Henry Laufer began making homemade remixes in the late 2000s, his production career igniting when Abel Tesfaye requested his remix of Drake & The Weeknd’s Crew Love become an official release. Sourcing influences from ’90s trip hop, shoegaze and skateboarding culture, Laufer’s debut Shlohmo album Bad Vibes (2011) attracted further acclaim for its groggy, lo-fi sound.
Further albums, Dark Red and The End upped the intensity of Laufer’s distortion-driven style, the former scoring Top 10 success on Billboard’s dance/ electronic chart. Later, Laufer co-founded the visual arts collective/label WEDIDIT and has increasingly moved into vocal production work, including the Banks single Brain. Shlohmo’s latest EP Heaven Inc. takes a more melodic approach, although still defined by Laufer’s angst-driven dystopian vision.
We read that you often use your dad’s Roland Jupiter-6. Is he responsible for your interest in music technology?
“My dad is a professional singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, so he always had stuff lying around. The Jupiter-6 was one of his last ’80s synth investments and he passed that down to me when I was about 21. Before that I’d started learning how to DJ and scratch when I was 14 or 15 – that’s how I got interested in production. At first I was just making mediocre beats and learning how to sample, but when GarageBand came out I started bringing in samples and chopping stuff up that I’d made as a kid. By the time I got
