Lanu Unveils Debut Single
aaamusic | On 29, Jan 2011
“Beautiful Trash” featuring Megan Washington is the first big single from the upcoming 2011 album, ‘Her 12 Faces’ by Lanu. An irresistible outsider pop nugget, “Beautiful Trash” is being released digitally by Tru Thoughts on 7th February 2011, a month ahead of the long player.
The combination of producer/guitarist Lanu (aka The Bamboos’ band leader Lance Ferguson), with one of Australia’s biggest and brightest new musical stars, Megan Washington, has brought about a distilled and immediate dose of modern, lyrical catchiness with an edge – think the eclectic, crossover appeal of Little Dragon, Feist, Emiliana Torrini, Charlotte Gainsbourg or Janelle Monae. “Beautiful Trash” is accompanied by a cute but killer animated video by celebrated director and Australian ‘national treasure’, Lucy Dyson, available to view now on the Tru Thoughts YouTube channel.
The ‘B side’ to this digital single is “Beautiful Trash” (Hidden Orchestra Remix), an atmospheric re-work that topples this breezy single over into menacing, dub-tinged sonic territory, with suspenseful, cinematic strings and sub bass galore. One of Tru Thoughts’ success stories of 2010, Hidden Orchestra’s debut album came out in September and is gathering major acclaim and interest from all over the world.
Signed to Universal, Gold-selling singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Washington has just been awarded two major gongs – Best Breakthrough Artist and Best Female Artist – at this year’s ARIAs (Australia’s top annual awards equivalent to the Brits/Mercury Prize/Grammys). Her debut album of idiosyncratic, dramatic indie pop, ‘I Believe You, Liar’, went Gold and shot to no. 1 in the album charts on its release in her native Australia and she is now poised to top ‘next big thing’ lists in the UK and elsewhere.
Lanu is the solo alias of Lance Ferguson, prolific producer and leader of the acclaimed Australian funk band The Bamboos, whose fourth album ‘4’ came out in March 2010 to immense acclaim and the adulation of a wider crowd, as well as the dedicated funk faithful. Worldwide radio support includes BBC Radio 2 and 6 Music in the UK, FIP and Nova (France), Triple J (Australia) and KCRW (USA), and widespread press coverage has appeared in The Times, the Independent On Sunday, Notion, Clash, iDJ, Wax Poetics, Rolling Stone and many more international publications.
You may remember Washington as the voice of The Bamboos’ acclaimed cover of Kings of Leon’s “King Of The Rodeo”, which achieved major UK and international radio support, such as the X-posure Hot One on John Kennedy’s XFM X-posure, plus specialist and daytime play on BBC 6 Music, Radio 2 and NME Radio.
The official “Beautiful Trash” digital single was preceded by a limited edition white vinyl 7” in December. The album, ‘Her 12 Faces’, is out on 7th March.
