Leeds-based electronic Folk musician Lucas Paw explores the delicate overlap between experimental electronics and folk music under the name The Undead Cat, mangling sounds of nature to weave atmospheric songs conveyed through their cathartic and vulnerable songwriting. Forming a "Hyper-natural" Sound
With a 3rd Cultural background, Lucas wrote and produced their 2nd album "Home in a Foreign Land" released earlier this year. Express the longing for community in a home away from home, and addresses the difficulties connecting with their motherland with their queer identity.
Heritage: Chinese Malaysian
Location: Leeds (UK)
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Tell us about your music:
My music seeks to combine folk music with experimental electronics, to in a way enhance the listener's experience. I create most of the sounds in my songs from scratch, putting instruments through experimental effects or manipulating field recording to maintain the organic feel in my music.
Within my songs, I often use them as a way to conjure up my feelings and express things I find hard to say otherwise. Often themes and experiences with my queer identity. Beyond my singer- songwriting stuff, I also like to create soundscapes using live vocal looping, drones and traditional vocal styles like throat singing. Creating an ethereal and immersive live experience.
Tell us about your early music memories and when you knew you wanted to pursue music:
I think like a lot of Chinese kids I stared out having piano lessons as a young kid. I also grew up catholic so my family always go to church on Sundays and sing all the hymns with the choir which I think had a lot of impact on some parts of my music practices currently.
But I didn't listening to much popular music until middle school. Aurora was one of the first artist that I truly fell in love with, alongside Björk which I started listening to her when I started University. Her artistry and experimental boldness of music is something I look up to and really pushed me to make make music of my own and get weird and crazy with it.
How does your heritage impact your art?
Honestly I'm quite unsure how my heritage impacted my work at the moment, but surely in a subconscious way, Malaysia and jus Southeast Asia in general has such a beautiful history of music which I need to dive deeper and research more.
But I'm definitely inspired by lot of traditional and indigenous folk music around the world, different vocal techniques like yodeling and throat singing really inspired my singing in my solo project.
What moment are you most proud of in your music journey so far?
I think I'm most proud how I perform my music live. With how complicated my production can be there's just no way I'll be able to recreate it with a guitar, or any live instruments to be fair. Learning how to perform electronic music beyond just using backing tracks is something that took a while to figure out but I think I'm in a good place at the moment using vocal looping and some hardware to create tracks form scratch, and having that mixture of backing tracks and stage magic!
Your next music goal:
Hopefully finishing this EP i've been working on and release sometimes in the future.
If you could collaborate with anyone, who and why?
Definitely a local artist called Floco. She makes ambient electronic folk music that is so ethereal. I find quite a lot of similarities in our music and our vision of combining folk music with experimental electronics and I just look up to her so much!!! If she sees this somehow just know that I am so down.
A song that has shaped you:
New moon - Alif Hilal (FKA Lyra Pramuk)
This song means so much to me, to the point that it's hard to put it into words, the amount of times I'm on the edge of tears listening to this song is crazy.
I found Alif Hilal's music at a similar time I was being more experimental with my voice both in singing and the digital processing of it. Her music found me in the perfect time with her album Fountains being fully made with her voice, a master class of sound design within instrumental limitations and electronic compositions.
In a way this ties back to my religious up bring, singing together in choirs and nurturing community, which she has a similar background in religion hymns as well and how her music is deeply inspired by it as well. Even tho I'm not religious anymore, I guess there must be a nostalgic factor in why I find her music so deeply moving.
Her music really inspires me even on a spiritual level. I was asked in an interview of what I hope to achieve with my music, despite how corny and vague it may sound, I wish to make the audience feel something, and that's how Alif's music makes feel. So visceral, sorrowful and hopeful all at the same time.
3 songs you're listening to right now:
Popstar - Tinashe
New Avatar - Kelela
Fountain - Alif hilal
Your community shout out:
SHOUT OUT Satnam @satnamvocalist!!! Who inspires me so much and pushes me to be more unapologetic about my work.
I first meet her at the very beginning of my music journey (that's beyond just my bedroom) as she was hosting an open mic for this organization called Launchpad. We crossed paths a lot when I was exploring the folk scene in Leeds (which is gorgeous btw shout out to them as well)
I think she has a huge impact on my journey and being a South Asian woman singing in a traditional style really inspires me, especially in a very white dominated trad scene (you know like the white man with guitar stereotype) I'm just very grateful for her presence, the spaces she created for the Leeds music scene, the work she's done and also all the gigs she put me onto.
Anything else you'd like to share?
I do have a new release coming up! (spend a whole year making this song... so you should definitely check it out!) It's a song called 'Walk with me', It's a song about intimacy and it's coming out on the 14th of October!
Fun fact ehhhhh.... I've never been through any "official" voice training and lessons before. My voice practice comes purely form hooting and howling in the shower for years.