La Prave - La Demo(s)
After the pair met and bonded over music at a party, Houston’s Lou Alejandre and Josh Cauoette kept in touch. In August, they began making music together as La Prave. The duo pulls from alt-rock, new wave, electronic, and post-punk to create a more experimental post-genre sound. Their new EP La Demo(s) is a fully cohesive project that sounds nostalgic and fresh. La Demo(s) is out on 12/13, but you can stream it here now!
These songs pull sounds from various genres, from post-punk to garage rock. What is your songwriting & production process?
Lou: Josh and I present each other with an idea. Whether it’s his song or mine, it becomes our song. As soon as I heard what he could do, I immediately trusted him to make something that is true to the both of us. He does most of the production with Ableton. We stay up late together playing with it until we’re both happy with how it sounds.
Josh: It's a cool and rewarding process because of the trust we share. I’m layering, tapering, whittling, and happy accidents happen that fit completely. For example, I'll have 6 guitar parts on one of my songs that get condensed to two parts, or one part is taken out and the rest is converted over to some MIDI instrument and I tell Lou to just do whatever feels right. We know how to listen to what's going on; not match it, but be in tandem with it.
What were some of the challenges with the production of the EP?
Lou: The main thing I can think of is day jobs. We navigate that easily because when we get together we really dive in and work hard, getting very lost in the process. It’s been a lot of learning, having to do multiple takes. I'm happy to do a lot of takes because I really want it to sound how it does in our heads and put it somehow onto the computer. Our attitude even through the internal and external struggles is pretty much “bring it on.” We love doing this and performing together.
Josh: What gets in my way is me or my own mood, which is partly caused by the day job and the fact that it’s not a livable wage. It’s honestly a challenge that I don't mind rising to. It's so much fun. This is a project that is stemmed from passion where we work as a team, which is what gives it so much torque. I’d rather be in a funk about having to go to practice or record instead of being in a funk about going to work.
Lou, you’ve talked about being self-taught, saying that it has helped you write/play intuitively. How would you say that translates to your role in La Prave?
Lou: I only ever had one guitar lesson and I didn't like it because they tried teaching me what I already knew. I live my existence in what I call fishing: I just shoot in multiple directions, messing around and hitting everything. Exploring the corners of my guitar, its tone, the pedals, and every inch of my creativity until eventually I land on something after floating around. I roll with that and I trust myself to keep evolving and expanding around what I have. There’s no tech or theory to it. I'm not opposed to either of those things, but it's more about my intuition and learning to work with what’s in front of me, my mind and inner guidance. Whenever it comes to recording with Josh the same purpose applies. We may already have a direction but then we have flukes that end up working and we explore all the what-ifs, we bond through our willingness and ability to be creative.
Josh: You're supposed to love the process anyway that's why you get into any craft. Being in this specific dynamic has allowed us to enjoy the process even more than we’re supposed to. I know it sounds airheaded, but there’s just really not a lot of people doing specifically what we’re doing in the way that we’re doing it–and delving into all of the genres we indulge in. I feel lucky to have met Lou, because we come from the same planet.
Josh, you make cartoons in addition to playing music. How does your work in animation influence your work as a musician? Are there any parallels between the two?
Josh: I wouldn't consider it a full-fledged cartoon. It's more of a primordial animation project right now, but I’ve been drawing since before I was making music. I produce in both projects. I'm a generator of ideas but I'm also lucky enough to have good references to pull from and have the drive to download free animation software and force myself to learn it. It was the same way with Ableton, my dad’s roommate who was a sound designer gave it to me as a gift and I absorbed as much about it as I could. The only thing that anything I create has in common is everything that I'm inspired by and I'm just a conduit. As a creator, I'm more often making music than drawing now, but I doodle a lot, always needing to make something. The parallel will become clearer the more distinguished both practices get in my life because I'm cultivating La Prave in the forefront right now and the cartoon is right there next to it when I need a different source of output. I know that my music and all of my people will come together in a huge spider web of connection and fireworks kind of way.
We’re enjoying the song “Witch’s Tongue.” Can you discuss how the track came together?
Josh: I wrote “Witch’s Tongue” in 2019 - 2020 while at a trade school learning to be a trucker in Wyoming. I brought my laptop and that was all I had. They sent us home because of the pandemic. It was nothing but mountains. We were only allowed to go into town every Friday. I would go into this stone shop and get a bunch of amethyst to keep my sanity. It felt like a cathartic release, seeing that anything can pop off anywhere even in the mountains.
Lou: When he showed it to me–I'm not gonna say that it sounds like I wrote it because it sounds like Josh, but it also felt like a missing part to what I was looking for. That’s how La Prave came to be. His style felt like the other half of what I was exploring. When I heard “Witch’s Tongue” and “Ape He,” all these tracks Josh showed me, it felt like a missing puzzle piece had been found. I did my spin on the guitars with an ecstatic buzz, an urgent feeling of wanting to put it out, and having someone to play live with that I truly connect with.
The song “WWW” contains the line, “When the world wide web dissolves / Will my problems finally be solved?” As an indie band, how do you view social media and its role within the music industry?
Lou: This song has multiple meanings, it's like I'm dissolving it into a glass of water and sipping it like medicine to soothe this anxiety. At the same time, I wish it would disappear because I formed this dependency on it to absolve the anxiety within me. I also feel anxious just for consuming and being part of it. Being online is such a paradox, that’s what the line means to me. It’s an expansion of me having a toxic relationship with the online world because I've grown to need it to soothe my anxiety. I also wish it would go away so I don't have that FOMO, anger, resentment, and fear. I grew up in an era with smaller online communities like AOL and Myspace. Now I'm living in a different era of the internet where it’s become a mundane thing, everyone gathers at a big city plaza. When it comes to discovering new artists, as a listener you need to work hard to find new music beyond what’s served to you on a platter. Then as a creator, you have to work extra hard to have your music be heard–because you're not just releasing it to a small specialized community where everyone interested in your genre goes– there’s so much of everything, so many niches and pockets you have to fight to have it be heard.
Josh: I agree with all that and the fact that it still can bring us together, but we’re not in a good place until we can learn to use technology for good. Nothing phases anybody any more; we're all so desensitized and numb. There’s a lot of derivative stuff too which is a symptom of having to work harder for what you want. True acts still shine through. When you realize there is no one like you, you shine the brightest.