There’s an exciting team-up in the works from Lorely Rodriguez—who you may know better as Empress Of—whose most recent EP Save Me was released around this time last year. The five-track follow-up to her third album I’m Your Empress Of featured a collaboration with Jim-E Stack, so Rodriguez is no stranger to this kind of thing.
Now, she’s put together something with Parisian artist Lewis OfMan (real name Lewis Delhomme—see what he did there?) for his first new music since last year’s debut album, Sonic Poems. It’s a single called “Highway,” and it seems to have been a fruitful collaboration for both of them, with the LA-based Rodriguez saying: “Lewis is a whirlwind artist and this song is nothing short of fantastic. He has such a clear vision of what he wanted to make with this song and played so many beautiful Brazilian references to me in the studio. Watching him in the studio is like watching lightning. Jumping from synth to synth, wearing sunglasses inside. A real renaissance guy.”
Delhomme, meanwhile, is similarly effusive about Rodriguez’s contributions, providing some additional context: “I met Empress Of in Los Angeles, the morning before going to the studio. I listened to this demo I had and thought this would be the perfect song to do with her. Vibes were so easy, we wrote and recorded her voice in a few hours, I was so impressed by her tone, one of the most talented singers [I’ve] ever met.”
Of the demo itself, Delhomme adds: “‘Highway’ was made in Greece, on a hot morning. [I’d] had these guitar chords since a few months. I just took this shitty mic, recorded first take with this barely tuned nylon guitar, and here I was, spending the whole day vibin’ on this track! You can hear the Greek cicadas in the take—I am happy about this.”
We’ve got a sneak preview of the accompanying video for you—the full song is out this Thursday.
