Adam Abdelkader Lenox first started making music, like most teenagers, out of boredom. “I had my mum’s computer, full of torrented music software, and a Line-6 Pocket Pod. That ugly thing that looks like a bean.”
Inspired by the obscurities of internet culture, he soaked up a miscellany of influences – mathrock, vaporwave, Japanese grindcore, UK bass and Toto’s Africa – that laid the foundations for the scintillatingly strange outsider pop that he records today as Zouj.
Lenox’s new album, METAL, might at first seem to namecheck hardcore guitar music, but this winking reference belies the glitched-out future-funk that makes up its eight exhilarating tracks. Dripping in effects processing, his offbeat constructions veer between mutant hyperpop, head-nodding club music and trippy, Brainfeeder-esque beats that recall City Slang labelmates Caribou and Gold Panda, rendering a portrait of an artist unafraid to reimagine all manner of styles in his own bizarro image.
We caught up with the producer to find out more about the synths, software and studio techniques behind his
