NME’s latest star of The Cover, Lava La Rue, has shared a playlist exclusively to accompany the story’s launch – check it out below.
The West London artist is on this week’s (July 22) edition of The Cover, a renewal of NME’s commitment to supporting emerging talent across the globe on a weekly basis. Every week, a rising artist will feature on The Cover – you can read the profile of Lava La Rue here, written by Alex Rigotti and featuring photography by Jamie Waters.
Accompanying the story is an exclusive playlist Lava La Rue has compiled, ‘Glitchy Space Grunge From Round the Planet’, featuring “glitchy grunge from Spain, Korea, The Middle East, Australia, England, Scandinavia, Africa, China, Brazil, Japan, France, America and beyond!”
That includes tracks by Feeble Little Horse, Yves Tumor, Death Grips and many more. Listen to the full playlist on Spotify below and on Apple Music.
The space theme of Lava’s playlist dovetails perfectly with the concept of their NME Cover photoshoot. As they explain: “I am an alien who’s just crash-landed in a rural British area, but I’m pretending to be a Boy Scout. Because what I’ve learned about humans is that they have scouts, so I’ll dress up as one of those to blend in. I could just be on an adventure and ask loads of questions and no one will think it’s weird.”
Lava’s love of a surreal concept is on full display on their fantastic, psychedelic debut album ‘Starface’. Nevertheless, it remains grounded in the stories of their multicultural West London upbringing, and is concerned with a concept they believe crucial to navigating society today: radical compassion. “How can we think we’re so much better than them? That’s radical compassion for me.”
Find out more about Lava La Rue in the full Cover story here and see who else has been on The Cover here.