all songs written, performed, and produced by ryan lott additional contributions by: steven temme, saxophones matt derubertis, bass guitar on "betray" and "raise" katie kikel, flutes eric stephenson, cello on "stay"
"2008 Best New Artist" - NPR's All Songs Considered
"Son Lux is challenging the very concept of music, viewing boundaries and genres as gateways to a much more exciting, and more honest creative horizon." - The Event Guide
"If Beck recorded in a monastery, this is what he might sound like. This is the best debut album I’ve heard in years." - Andy Whitman, Paste
"At War With Walls and Mazes may dictate to a large extent where electronic music is heading. It is cutting, poignant and gorgeous." - Fig & Mint
"Son Lux is an absolute genius. That’s no small praise to start this off, but it’s as good of an entry point as any. I think…and I might be wrong…that this is the future of modern pop. And I welcome it." – Shaun Bateman, Resonator Magazine
"Under the name Son Lux, composer Ryan Lott makes incredible songs in which his own repetitive, plainchantlike singing is laid over grids of electronic sounds. The results are sort of formless electro-lieder, but the formlessness is their winning feature. The songs dissolve and emerge like a whale breaching in slow motion." – ARTFORUM
"The sound on this record is incredible. It's cacophonous at times, stark, and sparkling other times." - NPR
“Gorgeous and brave. The fact that an album such as AWWWM can exist is, to me, representative of our movement away from the ironies of indie emotions and the emotionally blasted landscapes.” – The Guardian
"Not one song on this album is below the highest echelon of trip hop and electronic music. It is nearly flawless." - Nick Greer, sputnikmusic
"He’s constructed an experimentally-minded but nevertheless insanely satisfying sequencing of pop songs his first time out of the gate. This is how a memorable pop sound is made – create a mood and tread softly but firmly through both the gorgeous and the cacophonous." - Chris Polley, Reveille
"[Son Lux] travels from one style to another with an enviable and accustomed ease, as if he owns each of them and made them his own; in the process managing to create a set of near-perfect 'pop' songs to boot. He covers the whole spectrum with both a confidence and a surety that many would give their immortal soul for." - Simon Marshall-Jones, brainwashed
"It will take some sort of miraculous effort to unseat this one as the best album of 2008. - Andy Whitman of Paste
"Affecting, resonant, and engaging. There are lights in the darkness and a holy ghost in the Son Lux machine. The lyrical concerns of Sufjan Stevens circa Seven Swans, production techniques from Massive Attack, and the classical habits of Nico Muhly." - Evan McGarvey, pitchfork
"New York-based composer-turned-beatmaker Son Lux is one of those artistically adventurous outsiders. At War With Walls & Mazes is a hallucinatory vortex of Classical, Jazz, Soul, Rock and Electronica. Yes, it's just another excuse to shout 'SON!!!'" - El Keter, Okayplayer
"One of the most eerie and otherworldly albums in recent memory, but it's also one of the most gloriously human." - J Lincoln Hurst
"A dense, meticulously crafted haze of Baroque instrumentation, electronic pulses and hip-hop beats." - Mehan Jayasuriya, popmatters
"At War with Walls and Mazes defies genre and proves that the mathematics of music can be bent and at times even broken. From minimal elevator sounds to orchestral grandeur, Son Lux is defiant, wondrous, and illuminating." - B.A. Herndon
"Dynamic atmospheric tunnels of sound that quake and curl in your head." - Faith-Ann Young, RCRDLBL
"Music that undulates at a half-step ahead of the curve." - Jake Krolick, jambase
"5/5 stars." - Paul Ford, The Morning News
"Simultaneously engaging and hypnotic." Amelia Raitt, eMusic
"Son Lux has allowed the listener to listen to music without listening to songs, like a poet allows the reader to read words without sense, or at least any traditional sense. In this respect, Son Lux also opens the mind's eye." - Paul Bozzo, treblezine
"Like a well-written story desperate to share every detail, At War takes its time and savors each moment." - XLR8R
"Son Lux picks up where many classical crossover artists seem to jump off." - Paste
"Tracks organically mutate from opera-hall-sized compositions with car-speaker-rattling hip-hop beats to bare-all dim-lit bedroom intimateness. A superb and multifaceted album. More amazing is the fact that it is the work of one man." - Matt Whelihan, Free Times
"Son Lux funnels classical know-how into profound modern art songs. Electronica, alt-hip-hop, chamberlike arrangements, spare piano pop and other diverse strains come together to form a striking, futuristic whole on At War with Walls & Mazes." - Time Out NY
"The thing that's great about this record is that it has this incredible range of energy and emotion. The songs have this great narrative arc. They may start off really quiet and intimate and solitary. And then they just kick you in the stomach. They just erupt. I feel sometimes, when I'm listening to this record, like the songs just grab me by the collar, throw me to the ground, and then apologized." - Robin Hilton, All Songs Considered
"Snippets of this, bites of that, filtering through the radio waves, pulsing orchestration, transcendent beauty, always the beauty shining through and pulling you up there with it. This really is something different, something special, something inspiring, challenging and most of all something to put on repeat and just simply enjoy again and again." - Resonance FM
The images on this page were created by Joshue Ott. View more of his work at http://www.intervalstudios.com/superdraw/
Never told you but I do so love your Nude Remix...if I close my eyes I think I am listening to Thom with Christopher O'Riley, together on stage at The Kimmel Center...wow, wish THAT could really happen. So come to Philly damnit, people clearly love your sound(s)!!!
Thanks for adding me awhile back. I appreciate being your friend and I heard your Mute Math thing and liked it. I like all your music and hope I can see your show someday. Thanks
Hiya Lott. I had a good time listening to Break just now. I never realized the intensity of the beginning until now. I'm slow. But the REASON I called yer myspace is to bless you with the wonderful news that a new freakin rad as batshit song up on Carlos's page called Universe Explodes. He wrote it with a batch of kids and we recorded it and it's one of the songs in the musical. Like a minute and one second long. I hope all's goin as serendipitous as possible out there in the Big Banana. Sincerely, Grynn and Barrett Law Firm
