A few hours before opening the Dirty Hit Tour show here in Southampton at The Joiners, I had the chance to chat with Oscar Lang; a groovy upcoming indie artist who recently signed to the label earlier in June this year.
So how is tour going?
It’s been good, finding it crazy, we’ve only played 3 shows so far, but I feel like for some reason that it’s been 5, I don’t know why. But yeah it’s been fucking great so far, every show has been great.
How many more shows have you got after this?
I think the tour was around 25 shows so I guess 22! Which is sick because so far each show has just been better and better, so I’m really excited.
How would you describe your sound to someone who hadn’t listened to your music before?
Ah mate, it’s so difficult to describe my sound because I have such different stuff. So I just tend to say Indie cause it’s the easiest thing I can think of to tell people. And even then, some people will be like “What’s indie?”. So yeah I’d say I’m a weird mix of soft sounds and bopping around.
Have there been any prominent musical influences that have impacted this style?
Yeah, I have quite a few. I always say that Kevin Parker and Mac DeMarco and all of the producers that are creating stuff themselves really influence me. A guy did an album inside of a hotel room, and I was like, that’s so fucking sick, I wanna be doing stuff like that. I like the idea of doing it from your own house.
Did you grow up around music during your childhood?
Oh it was a huge part of my life! Like to be honest, I’ve had a weird change of musical tastes to the point now where I can’t say that I have just one thing that I’m into. When I was like 5 or 6, I used to listen to my dad’s guilty pleasure CDs, which had like Hall and Oates, and all that sort of stuff on it, which was banging. And then when I was like 10/11, in primary school, I was super into pop music and Capital FM, Katy Perry and all that. And then I had my edgy 14 year old phase where I liked Nirvana and Foo Fighters and all that, and then I had indie music from 16/17, and now I’m at like neo-psychedelia, that sort of music. So it’s all a weird mix, but I’ve never stopped loving one of those things, like I just kept collecting them and building them up. So I still bang the Year 6 tunes all the fucking time, ‘Written In The Stars’ you know?
Have you found it difficult being in the industry at a young age, with things like education?
Yeah I mean it’s been hard, but it only got really hard near the end of education. All of my life I just did kind of mediocre at school, and just coasted through it cause I just didn’t really enjoy it, but then I would go do music and get lost in it for 5 hours. So I realised that’s what happens when you actually enjoy something! Then I guess when I signed with Dirty Hit, my dad finally trusted that I actually really wanna do this and I’m committed. But I signed to Dirty Hit in March, so the last 3 or 4 months of school I was doing my A-Levels at the same time as doing the EP! We produced and made it all in like 7 days or something, so yeah that was super stressful. But then again that was when I saw how committed I was, no matter what, to doing shit in music, because I’m never gonna stop.
Have you got a favourite song perform, any one that stands out?
I love ‘French Girl’ because it’s just so light and bubbly and bopping about, so it’s really fun to play. But we’ve got a couple of new tracks as well that are super psychedelic that we fucking love to play and just go wild, cause they’re super upbeat.
So you’ve done a few collaborations, have you got a dream collaboration?
Ooh dream collaboration… I’d love to collaborate with Mild High Club, I just love their music and think they’re sick. I just know that that’d be a banging collaboration, those guys are so cool.
You’ve collaborated with Beabadoobee previously, did you meet through the label or did you know each other before?
Oh no, we met way back in the day. We both went to Catholic schools, and she found out about my music, and I was like, “Who is this instafamous girl, (she had like 10,000 followers at the time, nothing compared to her now at like 400k), and why is she dming me?” and then we started chatting about music, cause we both liked the same music. I saw on her livestream that she played a couple of songs that she had written on her acoustic, and she was like “Yo can you help me record some things?” so she came round to mine. All of her first tracks, like ‘Coffee’ from her first EP were done on my 8-track mixer in a little room. So yeah we’ve known each other a while!
That’s so cool! Is it weird touring together now?
Yeah! I guess I managed to meet all the dirty hit gang way before I’d even signed to them, like half a year before, so I’ve been with Bea through the whole thing, so it’s pretty sick.
You mentioned you’ll be playing some new songs tonight, are these songs working up to a new EP/album?
Yeah, we’ve been working on an EP for the last like 2 months now I think, we’re just taking more time with this one. It’s less of like, “Ah fucking panic, we need this done in 7 days!”. Also we’ve had big studios to work out. So that should be coming out early next year, which I’m very excited about. Plus we’ve got a little Christmas surprise coming out!
Get your tickets to see Oscar on the Dirty Hit Tour here!
