Breaking Free: FaltyDL aka Drew Lustman

Despite their obvious similarities – both have fans who love a rare jazz sample and have short attention spans – few electronic producers have thought to use the seedier side of the internet to market their wares. That is until last month, when users of the (ahem) well-known ‘streaming’ website PornHub were confronted with the thankfully SFW trailer for FaltyDL’s new album In the Wild. It’s a typical move from Drew Lustman, a New York-based producer who could hardly be accused of taking himself too seriously; though it’s also part of a bigger, more ambitious multimedia campaign he’s organised with UK artist Chris Shen, in which videos using his music are repeated endlessly through various devices, degrading in quality in a way that’s strangely hypnotic.

Long considered to be a producer’s producer, Lustman has been steadily making a name for himself over the past seven years with a sound that flits effortlessly between house, hip-hop, UK garage and techno. If that isn’t enough, underlying all of his restless musicality is a background in experimental jazz. His previous release, last year’s highly acclaimed Hardcourage, broke down a number of critical barriers, and led to his name being spoken in some circles in the same reverential tones as Four Tet and Floating Points. Fortunately, the new-found attention that this album afforded Lustman has actually given him more breathing space to experiment.

“Hardcourage was fun to make,” Lustman explains. “But it was loaded with meaning and purpose from that time in my life. That was my first time on a bigger label, with a bigger press push, and they had bigger expectations – whereas In the Wild just felt so natural. I was having so much fun experimenting with music and I got back to the place I was at on the first two records.”

In the Wild certainly sounds like the work of a man with a new sense of freedom at his fingertips: steeped in shimmering synths, lush samples and his trademark tricky beats, it’s Falty’s deepest, weirdest and, arguably, most satisfying album yet. Is that because Lustman had more creative control this time around, having proved himself with the last album?

“I guess so,” he considers. “I don’t know how you’re supposed to judge it, whether its sales or internet hype or whatever. It seems like everything’s going along at a pace where it just feels natural. I don’t feel like I’ve been shot into a new level of fame or hype or whatever. No one really wants a transient audience. I could put out a footwork record or a couple of jungle records and try to be one of those guys... but I’d rather put out an album of my music out.”

Accompanying the album’s press release is a poem written by Lustman, which seems to parody the hyperbolic PR speak favoured by many artists, combining track names into a narrative that will provoke and frustrate their interpretation by journalists in equal measure: “It was intended to be a bit cryptic… all of my heroes never did interviews or, if they did, they were super weird – like Aphex Twin.

“Having said that, I think the game has changed a lot now, so you have to give up a lot more. Also, because I run my own label now, and write press releases for the occasional 12'' as well, I get so bored of the formula. It’s just the same vocabulary. I’m not a poet or an author, but I find my own way around it a little bit” – he pauses, before reading a line from the poem – “Danger is Grief resolved through Rolling in New Haven. New Haven is the city that I’m from, and the album is about my tortured adolescence there with drugs and women and figuring all that stuff out.”

After forever being associated with the various scenes from which he has taken inspiration – mainly New York, LA and London – this autobiographical dimension of the album would suggest that Lustman is finally coming to terms with being an ordinary kid from Connecticut.

“A while ago now, I watched an incredible, inspiring interview with Moodymann. He was like, When you hire me for a show, I’m bringing you my life, Detroit, my corner, my block. It’s taken me ’til my 30s to bring my corner, my block to any show. I wish I could be an OG from Detroit, or South London, or whatever, but what I’m doing is actually pretty weird in its own right.”

Despite its unmistakable personal tone, the title of In the Wild – and the bucolic mood that pervades throughout the album – would suggest escapism is also a theme, and that maybe there are other places besides New York and New Haven that have inspired his music: “I fit into the group of people who would really have to call the internet our home. It’s really tough to pin a precise location on it.”

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“I wish I could be an OG from Detroit, or South London, or whatever, but what I’m doing is actually pretty weird in its own right” – Drew Lustman

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Perhaps another clue to this new focus on atmosphere lies in several ambient tracks on the album. These beatless compositions represent a new direction for Falty, well-known for his mastery of frantic percussive shuffles and breaks. Apparently, these tracks were inspired by an unexpected gig working for the famously reclusive auteur Terrence Malick.

“His people just gave me a hard drive with a bunch of music on,” Lustman remembers. “I’ve been making these five minute ambient-modern-classical tracks to use with the camera and start editing stuff to. I don’t know if it will end up in the final cut, you never know with him, but just to be in that conversation was very cool. There’s a couple of tracks on the album that are ambient and it’s something I’m interested in pursuing, and if it gets me film scoring gigs, even better! At a festival recently I saw Koreless play an entirely ambient set for an hour and it was beautiful – people weren’t dancing but they were nodding.”

Having grown up on the internet, unlikely collaborations come naturally to Lustman. One of the highlights off Hardcourage, She Sleeps, features vocals from Friendly Fires frontman Ed Macfarlane, and he’s currently in the process of writing “thousands of tracks” for Brooklyn rap provocateur Le1f – “I think I’m attracted to characters, y’know, and he’s definitely an attractive character.” One of the attractions of working for other artists for Lustman is that it allows him to be more selective with touring, which he makes no pretense of enjoying. This is a surprising admission considering his formidable live reputation, and the enviable support slots he’s played for artists such as Radiohead and James Blake.

If Lustman doesn’t always enjoy being the centre of attention, it’s obvious that he enjoys getting other voices heard as much as his own. The past year has seen the rapid rise of his label, Blueberry Records, which was born last September to release the debut EP of his friend and protégé Brrd. With a similar penchant for jazzy house and hip-hop, Brrd is definitely a chip of the old block, though Lustman is keen to stress their differences: “He does hip-hop a lot better than I do. I really like signing kids that sort of do what I do, but better than I do. It’s funny, I had those demos for about three years. I was sending them around and everyone was like ‘Drew...this is great music, put them out on your own label.’”

Recent releases include EPs from more establishes acts such as 4hero’s Dego, and Luke Vibert’s Luke Warm alias, while there are further plans to put out an EP by another unknown, Kai Kasano, who “sounds like a young experimental Squarepusher, but a bit more relevant to what kids are doing these days.”

So, what next for Falty? Aside from a couple of releases under his real name, touring duties and producing for Le1f, he has no immediate plans, though it’s clear that this album will stand him in good stead for the future: “Now when I write tracks for other vocalists, it’s more of the same experimentation I was doing on In the Wild. It feels very free right now. I feel like I can do anything, and I haven’t felt that in a long time.”