Producer and artist LLusion has taken TikTok by storm with his lo-fi remixes, but also with his own original music. With his most recent track “After the Tone” (a collaboration with singer UPSAHL) accumulating just under 3550,000 streams on Spotify, it seems his 2022 is off to a great start. Dabbling in a variety of genres, there’s truly no limit to where LLusion’s career could go. In the midst of this busy time, I was able to ask him a few questions over email, and dive into both his musical background and his future plans.
Brigid: What role has social media played in your music career?
LLusion: Plain and simple, if there wasn’t any social media, I wouldn’t be [be here] […] It’s incredible that because of these phones that we all have and the internet, I literally don’t have to leave my home to make a name for myself and also, to get messages from people saying “your song changed my life.” The fact that I don’t need to leave my house and I don’t need to leave my dogs and my wife, it’s mind blowing to me. So, I absolutely wear social media on my sleeve as far as success and really being able to get everything out there for people to intake themselves. So, yes, it takes a huge part in my career for sure.
Brigid: You’ve been making music since you were pretty young, what originally drew you to music production?
LLusion:My dad [grew] me up on 90s hip-hop, the big names from the east coast like Tribe Called Quest to Wu-Tang and everything; and when I realized that a producer named J Dilla was working on a lot of Tribe Called Quest stuff, that made me get into J Dilla and DJ Premier. I was listening to all of these great hip-hop songs and then there came a time where I was like “Man, I just want to listen to these beats” and I didn’t know if that was possible and I didn’t know listening to instrumental music was a thing.
Then, when I was in 8th grade, I was 14 (this is 2012) and I found Nujabes and I was like “Woah, he incorporated jazz and hip-hop music but just for listening purposes,” with or without vocals — it wasn’t a mandatory thing. That completely opened up my whole insight on music. Within a year, for all of my freshman year of high school, I was intaking so much information on instrumental music and then, by my sophomore year, I was like “I can’t just listen to this anymore, I really want to and really feel like I can bring something to the table”. I was digging in record stores [where] I was going to the dollar bin. My only record store was primarily just a record shop; this is where kids who were in 5th and 6th grades went to rent instruments but there was this little section of records in the corner and they were so cheap, and I was the only person in there. So, I just started sampling records and making beats out of them. That’s where the production started to blossom. I never got super into instruments, samples [are] what really gravitated towards me and the fact that I was able to make them into my own, that’s how it started.
Brigid: You’ve done a lot of lo-fi stuff, but also dabbled in some different genres, especially with these recent collaborations. What’s your favorite genre to produce?
LLusion: Working with Nothing Nowhere and FEMME, and we were doing pop-punk songs. I’ve been wanting to make post-punk stuff just like the Joy Division 80s punk sound because I love listening to The Smiths and everything. My funk remixes are almost just as known as my lo-fi remixes from 24KGolden “City of Angels” to the Don Toliver funk remix. I’m so happy that Dua Lipa’s Future Nostalgia album is a giant album in this era of music and the fact that disco music is so relevant again or what Silk Sonic is doing with soul music; that gets me so excited because disco music is such a timeless sound. There was a time that disco “died” and floor-on-floor rhythms and funky guitars and stuff, you can never get rid of that. I love dabbling in disco and funk music and then, just bedroom pop – rex orange county’s new album is fantastic, I’ve been listening to it non-stop. And, pop music in general. I’ve been wanting to make records and we’ve already worked on a few pop songs that are up for sync right now that I’m really excited [about]. I never spent a lot of time listening to Top 40 on the radio or listening to your typical pop songs you would hear in Forever 21 or something but it’s really fun to dabble in that genre and be a part of that.
Brigid: “After The Tone” is your latest release with UPSAHL, can you talk a bit about that collaboration and how it came about?
LLusion: I love talking about this because this was half a year before the vaccine ever came out and we didn’t even have conversations about a vaccine. My team really wanted me to get into sessions and this was before I even worked with any artists in person. My publicist was like “Hey, Zoom sessions are a big thing right now in the industry.” And I’m like, “I don’t see how that’s even possible of working and the audio is gonna sound terrible.” I didn’t know if it was going to work out. And he’s like, “Just give it a shot.” This was a few days after Christmas of 2020 and my publicist’s like, “Okay, you got it with UPSHAL and I knew UPSAHL from “Drugs” and “People I Don’t Like” — one of my favorite songs from her. I knew that she worked with Max Prior so that made me relieve the stress. So anytime I was struggling during the session, I knew Max would fill in all those spots that I possibly couldn’t, at that time.
Anyways, we got on Zoom, met them for the first time and within those four hours we came out with “After The Tone.” It’s crazy to think that that was my first session working with an artist in general, let alone it being zoom. It’s a song that’s now finally out for people to hear. And it’s funny, I didn’t even know how I felt about the song until I mentioned my wife sticks a lot because she’s, I consider fit 5050 With LLusion. Just because she’s like my naked ear since she doesn’t create, she plays guitar and everything but since she doesn’t like to create music, I always love letting her listen to stuff and she’s kind of like my barometer. and when I showed it to her, she’s like, this is actually really good and I was oh, it made me really excited to see the potential of it. So to think of where to think that it was made in that session and I think we really created something special there. That’s how that whole thing came about, and then I’m so excited. Yeah, Taylor’s awesome Max is great, and now Max is like a great friend of mine and we work together all the time.
Brigid: What’s next for LLusion? Are there any future projects to look forward to?
LLusion: My debut project, Buffet, came out back on November 8 and has incredible songs. I highly suggest people go check that out, it contains over 15 vocalists, some new, some underground. That’s such an incredible project to me that I hope to represent for many years to come just because I really do think it has a very good sound. With that being said, I’m kind of taking it back a little bit to how everything started and the roots of everything and I am currently working on my first actual album. I mean, Buffet was really an EP, but this album is going to contain 99% instrumental music again with some features from producers. As like I said, it’s incredible to make these great songs with vocalists like “After the Tone” with UPSAHL you know, it feels really good to get to focus hardcore on the instrumental music itself. I know that’s what a lot of people [want] at the end of the day like, “I’m being honest with myself, it’s my decision in my choice to bring a vocalist that I think is really good to feature on a song of mine”, but whether it’s not 100% my demographic or this or that, I know instrumental music will always be there. So that’s why I’m really focusing on that. We’re hoping by summer time-ish to get some more music out there. It’s going to range anywhere from Lo-Fi to Funk instrumentals. It’s going to be good, it’s gonna real good.
And, aside from music, something that I’m absolutely extremely excited to announce and finally release is my podcast with my wife called “Six Illusion.” We’re interviewing everyone from incredible artists from Freddie Dread to TikTok creators like TootieMcNootie. All these different people that we’ve become friends with, whether musicians or content creators in general. We’ll be dropping that extremely soon. We’re trying to get tons and tons of episodes set. But yeah, dropping extremely soon.
Listen to “After the Tone” here!
