LUSA – The Colour of Space track-by-track

LUSA is the new electronic project from Niteworks synth player and producer Innes Strachan and LUSA's debut album, The Colour of Space, is out today. Written alongside Beth Malcolm and Donald Macdonald, LUSA's live lineup is completed by Niteworks drummer Ruairidh Graham. 

Inspired to explore different genres of music outwith the Gaelic-electro fusion Niteworks are so well known for, this new project came about following the shock Multiple Sclerosis diagnosis Strachan received in 2020. While The Colour of Space still sounds very much rooted in Scotland, possibly down to Malcolm's lush vocals, the record features more pure moments of driving dance, albeit with a futuristic, cosmic and otherworldly twist, as well as the odd tender and pared-back moment.

With the album now out in the world, Strachan talks us through The Colour of Space track by track, with some input from Malcolm and Macdonald.

TMAAS
TMAAS (Tell Me All About Space) is a song Donald initially wrote in the days following the news that he was to become a Dad. It’s about the mystery stretching above our heads and coming to terms with our minuteness in the universe. We wrote it with an album opener in mind and went expansive with synths, string arrangements and production but leaving plenty space between elements to bring on feelings of our insignificance in all of this.

Probably
Probably is a song that Donald and I first started working together on way back in 2013/14. An expression of loneliness and self-reflection during a particularly transitional point in life. The dawning realisation that your youth is not quite as eternal as it once seemed. An inner conflict, and in the end a responsibility to live by the choices you make. 

Hawea
Hawea is an instrumental I wrote when visiting a place very close to my heart, Lake Hawea in New Zealand. The landscape there is so dramatic and changes at every turn, similar in that way to Scotland’s northwest coast but on a more jaw-dropping scale. I initially wrote the melody on the pipes, so I feel there is a recognition within the music of the similarities between the two places, the rugged drama and the beauty.

Crosses
Crosses is a cover of the José González song with the same title, taken from his 2003 album Veneer. I’ve been a fan of José González’s music ever since I saw him at T in the Park in 2006. The lyrics are a masterpiece and resonate in the modern world with the constant anxieties and stresses of life, yet they also offer comfort and hope.

Coloured In
Coloured In is a song Donald and I wrote together about growing up and those that have grown alongside us. This has emerged as a theme that runs through the record. It’s maybe something about moving through your 30s. Increased responsibilities: kids, marriages, ‘careers’. Where at one time it was every weekend, it has become a rarity to stay up all night playing music with your pals. We wrote it after lockdown when it seems we came out the other side in a different era of our lives.

Donald says: "There is a warm feeling of nostalgia when I now walk around Glasgow with a pram at 8am on a Sunday morning, passing some of the old haunts. The ghosts of our carefree, skinny-jeaned, floppy-haired selves, All My Friends serenading the early dog walkers and middle-aged men in their 30s pushing prams."

Glaiste
Glaiste, which translates from Gaelic as ‘Locked’, was written during lockdown in 2021. It’s one of the darker moments on the album. I wanted to try and convey the feelings from within that period in our lives; frustration, repetition, loss, the feelings of being trapped and the inner battles to keep mentally healthy. It’s a bit of a psycho-banger.

Lucia
Lucia is another creative by-product of the lockdown years, the melody of which came to me whilst daydreaming and reminiscing with my wife Erin about a road trip on the Pacific Highway, California. Having come up with the melody I shared a demo with Donald who had also travelled that journey a few years previous and the song came very naturally from there.

Donald says: "The inspiration for the lyrics came from memories of hugging the ocean driving south on the Pacific Coast Highway... Looking with rare optimism at a life ahead of me. Whales breaching, low evening light and for a minute abandoning the realities of life in a sun-drenched haze."

Flight
Flight is a collaboration between myself and poet Colin Bramwell. I went to him with a brief of writing a spoken word piece, inspired by wandering travellers met whilst in the states in 2018. Characters who live their life without societal burdens or any need to follow a conventional path through life. We wanted to create something that continued on from the hazy sun-soaked vibes of Lucia but that also worked from the perspective of someone living a similar life on the west coast of Scotland.

We got in touch with close friend and actor Lorne MacFadyen to record some vocal demos of the piece and he was so good that we used him on the recording. This might smash the illusion that the recording is a sample of a Californian hippy from the 1970’s but we may as well be honest!

Favourite Place
This is a song that Beth wrote. It’s full of emotion and tells a common story in the age of online relationships and dating. I was keen to try and harness the feeling with a sparse arrangement and production.

Beth says: "This song was inspired by a line in Cara Matthews’ writing, a Geordie poet I met on the first day I moved to Glasgow. Written originally to a single double bass line as a stream of consciousness, this is my heartfelt account of being ‘ghosted’. This song voices the lesson that took me to my quarter-life to learn: no matter what the circumstance, if they want to, they will get in touch."

El Seq
El Seq is an instrumental written with the story of a particularly eventful night of clubbing in Orlando’s night time underworld. I tried to capture the chaos, energy and unpredictability of that night in the music.

Play Hats
Play Hats is a love song Donald wrote about the bewilderment of finding someone who is effortlessly compatible. Someone who you’ve let know every inch of you and as such unearthed your inevitable flaws. The title of the song references the album Hats by The Blue Nile – in our opinion, some of the most beautiful music ever to come out of Scotland. I tried to capture the emotion in the backing starting with piano and adding synths around it. Beth’s vocal took the song to another level, and I couldn’t think of a more fitting close to the album.

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The Colour of Space is out now

Follow LUSA on Instagram @thisislusa