May is a busy month for new electronica line up, LUSA, who will release two new tracks and then play their debut headline show before the month is out.
Friday May 17 will see the release of Lucia (featuring she strings of Laura Wilkie) and Probably – remixed by Ros T.
The following week, Friday May 24, new venue Dannsa on Sauchiehall Street will play host to LUSA’s first headline show. It will be a Skye takeover for the evening, with Grace Morton supporting and Ros T’s album launch finishing off the night.
The driving force behind LUSA is Innes Strachan – who many readers will know as one quarter of popular, Skye based Gaelic-electro line up, Niteworks.
After putting some ideas together, Innes teamed up with good friends and collaborators Donald MacDonald and Beth Malcolm to begin working on some songs. Beth’s stellar solo career is well known and I have written fondly of Donald’s previous line up, The Islands, in this column many times before.
Perhaps neither of them would thank me for saying this, given how brilliant they are in their own right, but they both come from pretty decent musical stock: Donald is the son of Calum from Runrig and Beth’s father is legendary Perthshire folk singer, Jim Malcolm.
Very quickly after getting together, between a blend of synth-driven instrumentals and co-written songs, LUSA had an album.
Their lead single, Probably, was released with a music video last month to great acclaim on social media, and their album is due out very soon.
Their first live performance was supporting us in the Barrowlands just over a fortnight ago.
Originally, LUSA were booked to play the Saturday night but everything changed when our Friday night support had to pull out due to illness. After a couple of hasty (and slightly panicked) messages to Donald and Innes, LUSA were booked for not one but two nights. Given they had never played live together before, and they had initially planned the Friday as a rehearsal day for the Saturday, this perhaps wasn’t the ideal preparation for their first ever gigs.
Consummate professionals, though, they absolutely hit it out the park both nights. The Barrowlands audience (4,000 of them over the two nights) were held in thrall by their captivating synth melodies and chord progressions fronted by Beth’s stunningly powerful vocal.
Excited to hear them, I came out of the dressing room and stood at the back of the hall. I was clutching a cup of Lemon and Honey tea (like a total rock star) and got chatting to a venue security guard who was very impressed with LUSA.
Seemingly oblivious to the fact I would be going on stage within the next half hour, the chap looked at my cup of tea and asked me to make him one! So I missed the end of their set.
I know from what I saw, however, that they are well worth catching in Dannsa on May 24, for which tickets are available online.
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