Today Nick Littlemore and Peter Mayes officially launch their record label, Lab78. With a discography spanning 20 years, the enigmatic duo has been a foundation of decades of dancing around the world. From the chart-topping PNAU, the globally-renowned Empire of the Sun, and alt-rock project Teenager, the pair’s influence spans further into music direction and composing for Cirque Du Soleil, soundtracking for Disney, as well as work with the power pop pedigree of Elton John, Robbie Williams, Ellie Goulding and Groove Armada. Littlemore and Mayes are icons of the arts, and arguably a jewel of Australia’s music culture.
On starting their own label, Littlemore said, “The reason we started Lab78 was because we were meeting these very special people, these beings. Peter and I wanted to bring them into our fold so we may make the records that we felt not only did the artist desire or deserve, but the world deserved, and use our expertise, with the help of these wonderful artists like Alister Wright, like Ivy who you are yet to meet, and bring them out to the world.”
Partnering with etcetc (the label home for PNAU since 2006), Lab78’s A&R and creative will be strongly driven by Littlemore and Mayes, while label services will be carried out by the team at etcetc. General Manager of etcetc, Aden Mullens spoke of the partnership, “Setting up this label with Nick and Peter has really been awe-inspiring. Nick and Peter are hyper-creative individuals with a masterful vision for authenticity and substance. We’re really excited about the projects to come on Lab78 and supporting them in their vision across a broad cross-section of career artists.”
The first release on Lab78 is a collaboration with Blue Mountains native Alister Wright on a project tilted Vlossom. Some may know Wright as the front man of alt-rock band Cloud Control, or his single with multi-platinum artists Peking Duk. Littlemore and Mayes co-wrote and produced a body of work with Wright over a multitude of sessions on both sides of the Pacific, which evolved to symphonise elements of pop, psych-rock and electronic music into something strangely multisensory and undeniably transformative. “We both connect on a naïve, child-like urge to play and have make-believe come real,” explains Littlemore. “Alister is a pretty open-minded guy, like me, and thus we’ve both explored some pretty interesting headspaces. Often times he’ll sing something that just once, but I can see a sea of people in a festival echoing back. Those kind of moments, they demand repetition. Everyone feels the undeniable, where we all feel the love of another, that kinship. Each listen deepens the experience. He sung a world into existence and now it’s time for me to chart it, like a cartographer.”
During the sessions, Wright had a vision of laughing flowers—an echo of the psychedelic revelation that inspired the project’s name. “The word ‘Vlossom’ felt emblematic of the emotion that we wanted to channel, and it also went along with the idea of this project being a way to bring something back from another world and give it a home in this one,” Wright says.
Ahead of the release of Vlossom’s first single ‘Catch Your Breath’, Littlemore goes into story-telling mode as he narrates his first feelings towards Wright, how the project began and came into being. Littlemore also offers more details about Lab78. Listen to the introduction to Vlossom here: https://vlossom.lnk.to/introducing
