Julian Lamadrid

Photo by provided by, Julian Lamadrid

Meet Julian Lamadrid

Let the dark mysterious pop powers of Julian Lamadrid overwhelm you today. There is always some kind of astrological weirdness going on so every day is fair game to fall into a musical void. Julian Lamadrid’s atmospheric pop music will be the perfect soundtrack to that void. The even-tempered intensity and sincerity of their tunes will get the job done. Get to know the artist in our latest interview as we chat about memoirs, family traditions, and dream collaborators.

Some questions with Julian Lamadrid

Your music combines a host of different genres, including bedroom pop, hip hop, synth, and rock. How would you describe your own sound?

I hope it doesn’t sound like bedroom pop. Despite my music being pop and the fact that I compose and write the majority of it in my bedroom, I strive to create music that transcends the bedroom. I’m reaching a little farther. I’ve had a lot of trouble in the past describing my sound simply because I refuse to put myself in a box as I’ve always found labels limiting, however, if I were to attempt to describe the sound I am currently exploring I’d summarize it as space-age pop music, a fresh electronic landscape. That’s what I’m striving for anyway.

Where/how do you put your thoughts when creating a song?

Voice Notes on my phone initially, it’s just always there so that’s usually the first place a thought, idea or melody will end up. And then later once the idea has endured the test of time I might begin to play with it on Logic and actually begin to record. It’s a slow process for me.

Do you have a favorite family tradition?

My family is pretty distant, we all live in different places around the world so we don’t get to spend much time together, at least not like family holidays and big traditions, etc, but drinking tequila with my dad and cousins and getting extremely drunk all together seems to be the closet thing to a tradition for us, so probably that.

Who would be your dream collaborator?

Daft Punk.

How has your background studying film influenced your current art and music, if at all?

Film is always the main inspiration for me, I’m a visual artist and so any time I’m creating a piece of music all I can think about it the scene it would play in, the film it would score. It’s all about striking the equilibrium between sound and vision, the sweet spot where everything makes sense. Drive, Mean Streets, The Tree Of Life, El Topo, these films are all symphonies. Every art form is one in the same and they all inform each other. Cinema happens to be the art form that reveals all the secrets to me. It’s the holy grail. I hope all my music is as cinematic as these films. It is the greatest achievement to transcend sound with a beautiful piece of music.

If you could only use 10 words for the rest of your life what would they be?

Yes

Red

Blue

Electronic

Beautiful

Love

Lights

Soft

Pressure

Surrender

What would the title of your memoir/biography be?

“Bleed”

What was the first concert you ever went to?

Elvis Presley Impersonator 2004

What has been your brightest moment of 2020 so far?

I went to Puerto Escondido and stayed in a shack on the beach for a week.

As a solo artist, how do you strive to preserve your creative vision when collaborating and working with others?

It’s extremely difficult for me to work with others, I’m too stubborn. I know what I like and I certainly know what I don’t like. And I also hate wasting time and money, so it’s hard. There’s a moment when you’re in the room with somebody and you are kind of forced to create something together, I hate that moment. All my fruitful collaborations have been incredibly natural and spontaneous, those are the best. I am lucky because I have almost all the tools necessary to create in a void, and so the from inception to completion I am able to call the shots and honor the initial impulse. I say lucky but maybe I am wrong, who knows.  

How has living in New York shaped the narrative of your work?

Immensely. I was quite poor for a while here, I didn’t eat or sleep much and mostly spent the nights drinking and wandering around the city. Those hours of solitude in New York do something to you as a young man trying to find his place in the world. They mold you, for better or worse. I am a slave to the city. It got it’s teeth into me and it still hasn’t let go. 

Any final comments? (This is your electronic soapbox for one last answer.

“I wanted to swallow myself by opening my mouth very wide and turning it over my head so that it would take in my whole body, and then the Universe, until all that would remain of me would be a ball of eaten thing which little by little would be annihilated: that is how I see the end of the world.” 

– Jean Genet