Artist Profile: Fellers Island
Fellers Island, the ambient-pop project of Canadian artist Lagan Horton, presents the listener with tracks that are intimately encounterable, enfolding themselves within the moods and imagist mindset of their creator.
His new project, “Lighting the bedtime sky”, takes a decidedly more polished direction than his previous works, dancing between the highs of noise-imbibed synth pads and the lows of brooding percussions.
He counts Telepath and Desert Sand Feels Warm at Night, two legends of the vaporwave scene, among his influences. While he bears aspects of their music, including similar percussive patterns, there is a budding uniqueness to Horton’s music.'
Remarkably, Horton only began producing music within the past couple of years after downloading FL Studio on a whim. His rapid progression, from the simple arranging of various samples to the unique and intricate original tracks he now creates, is easily visible in his output on Spotify.
Regardless, as is evidenced by the obvious intention present in his recent project, Horton’s love for his genre runs deep.
“For me, ambient music is such a nice space-filler… in those moments where I feel like I need to focus, like if I'm studying or cleaning or even cooking, a good ambient song can… keep my head level on my shoulders. That's what I really like about it.”
While his tracks make innovative use of noise textures, this technique ultimately does not extend to the level of an underlying drone motif. Instead, they are meant to truly be “space-fillers”; not in the negative sense of indistinctness but rather in the sense that they encompass a particular space and time
In fact, it is the momentary nature of daily life that infects and spirals out of Horton’s arrangements. He invariably produces his music according to his headspace; even the lyrics are improvised as representations of an ever-fluctuating existence.
“I feel like any song that I have ever made could pretty much be linked to a photo I took of some skyline or a nice cityscape. I am always able to take in these open, colorful atmospheres… That's exactly what's going through my head when I'm listening to these kinds of things.”
In centering his tracks around specific thoughts or images, Horton provides anchors to his music that maintain its cohesiveness yet allow for subtle fluctuations that, when observed more closely, evolve into explorations of disposition.
This level of nuance having been achieved so quickly, Horton plans to take a couple of months to focus on his schoolwork. However, he knows that, as far as his creative output is concerned, the best is yet to come.
“To me, it only means that [my] future music, as I keep refining those skills, is just going to get better over time. That's what I really look forward to. This release I just put out was my first fully unsampled original work, so I understand that it's kind of rough around the edges. I just hope I can polish that in the future.”
