Louis Cole Goes Orchestral – clashmusic.com

When Clash last caught up with Louis Cole in mid-2022, he was gearing up to release ‘Quality Over Opinion’, a sprawling 20-track odyssey of his unique, frenetic brand of jazz, pop, funk and everything else in between. Drawing inspiration from the works of composers Gustav Mahler and György Ligeti, bands like Meshuggah and the 16-bit musical stylings of Super Mario Kart, the result was everything you’d expect from a Louis Cole project.
Fast-forward to 2023 and the LA-native had even bigger ambitions. A long-time admirer of classical music, Cole had been eager to pursue a crossover project for years, but had never found a way to get it off the ground. Inspired by the orchestral tinkerings of his peers, he reached out to fellow multi-instrumentalist Jacob Collier on the off chance that he might be able to put him in touch with composer, conductor and arranger Jules Buckley, known for his work with Dutch pop and jazz orchestra, Metropole Orkest. Collier duly obliged.
“I was like, I really want to work with an orchestra, so I’m just going to be a rude guy and ask myself to be invited,” he states. “And he did call me back. And I thought that was really cool. This is back when I really didn’t feel like I was very well known, so I really did not take that for granted. I thought that was very cool.”
Buckley was hugely enthusiastic about the prospect of collaborating and before long a collaboration with Metropole Orkest was on the cards. Cole’s dream project was quickly becoming a reality. Buckley initially proposed re-works of pre-existing songs with orchestral arrangements, but Cole opted to reject the path of orchestral renditions of previous works in favour of something almost entirely new.
“I can’t imagine doing something not new, designed specifically for an orchestra,” he continues. “It’s my one chance in my whole life to write for an orchestra. I’ve wanted to write for an orchestra since I was 18. This is my shot, so I have to create. And I was so excited that I just wrote a lot. It really flowed out of me. It was probably one of the biggest flows of creativity that I’ve ever had.”
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Though initially planned as a tour, the end result was ‘nothing’ – a 17-track opus that, in true Louis Cole fashion, has a title that belies the complexity and ambition on display. With its eclectic blend of jazz, funk, synths and loops, underpinned by Cole’s trademark drumming and sweeping arrangements courtesy of a 50-piece orchestra soundscape, it’s a project quite unlike anything he has attempted before. Naturally, he jumped right in, electing to write and arrange the project by himself.
“You don’t need to have incredible technical knowledge of all things about the music that you’re about to make,” he muses. “I think if you just have a genuine nuclear bomb level interest – and time – and, I guess, the desire to work, you can do anything really, I think… I was happy that I decided to do that and not call someone. I mean, obviously I called friends to ask, ‘What’s the range of an oboe?’ And stuff like that, but I really wanted to do everything with the orchestration, arranging and writing.”
In a strange coincidence, ‘nothing’ wasn’t Buckley and Metropole Orkest’s only crossover project of 2024. Cole’s album ended up launching within weeks of Cory Wong’s ‘Starship Syncopation’, an instrumental fusion of Wong’s jazz-funk stylings and orchestral movements. A close friend of Cole, the album marked Wong’s second collaboration with Metropole Orkest following 2020’s ‘Live in Amsterdam’. 
“Cory and I had dinner one time and told him, ‘I’m gonna release my orchestra album in August.’ He’s like, ‘Oh shit, I’m gonna release mine in August. Maybe I’ll release it at a different time.’” 
Unbeknownst to Cole, Wong playfully elected to release the album just one month ahead of Cole’s project.
“Oh, he undercut me then?” he laughs. “Well, I’m on the record saying he’s a bitch for that.”
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Cole developed the ‘nothing’ project over a six month period of writing and arranging. While he found the process largely similar to his usual writing process, he initially found his enthusiasm for classical to be at odds with the expectations of an ensemble used to their pop, rock and jazz leanings.
“Well, I’d heard that they don’t like playing classical music and I tried to bring in all this shit,” he laughs. “Jules saw my orchestrations at first, and he was like, Whoa, is this? Wow, yeah. So he, uh, He’s great. He’s so great to work with. He was like, ‘We got to change this and this.’ He gave it to their orchestrators, they changed all my orchestrations and then we spent the first two or three rehearsals just changing the arrangements and the orchestration back to basically what I had, except for a couple things. They added some xylophone on a couple things, but other than that, they started to trust my vision after a while. They were cool with it, and we kind of reverted back to what I originally wrote.”
It wasn’t until Cole was into the third iteration of the tour with Buckley and Metropole Orkest that Cole considered the idea of actually committing their work to record.
“That’s what they came to me with,” he recalls. “‘We’ll just do some shows.’ And I was like, well, I’m gonna hire my friends, pay them $100 to film on iPhones, and we’re gonna record it, so that was really my intention, for sure. I’m not gonna let this just go into the ether. Some of the videos on YouTube are so lo-fi. We had three camcorders, and one of them was too shaky, so I had to take a camcorder shot and zoom into it, so it’s the most pixelated, fuzzy shit. There’s a show that’s professionally filmed, but then the other one is super DIY… I kind of feel out of place if it’s too clean.”
DIY aesthetics are nothing new for Cole, of course. Prior to ‘nothing’, he had already established a reputation for his live shows, which combined with Cole’s wry humour offer up a frenetic mish-mash of genres and styles. Released in mid-2020, live album ‘LIVE 2019’ was no exception. Known online for his ‘Live Sesh’ videos – a series of live re-works of album tracks recorded in Cole’s apartment, often with the support of a suite of brass players, ‘LIVE 2019’ transposed the energy of these recordings to the stage. Seamlessly pieced together from performances from two separate shows in Los Angeles and Amsterdam, it acted as an unlikely precursor for what was to come.
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The album ‘nothing’, Cole’s third on Brainfeeder, would ultimately be culled from recordings from multiple performances of each song recorded across various live dates, which enabled Cole to hone in on individual performances and solos. The live nature of the recordings also limited his ability to re-record anything, which meant the final mixes represent a collage of Cole’s favourite takes, complete with the natural imperfections associated with live performance.
“That’s kind of what makes it beautiful,” he continues. “It’s all in the performance. Strings have to play out of tune with each other, otherwise it’s not beautiful. If strings played perfectly in tune with each other, it would sound like a shitty synthesizer. That’s inherently, what’s beautiful about it. I was really in touch with that – people having micro interpretations at the time, or the pitch, that really made it beautiful and full of life. A lot of times when I’m recording something, I’ll try to play a part perfectly, and I’ll keep recording it and recording it. Sometimes you lose something by trying to do that over and over to get it so perfect… This is an orchestra. It’s supposed to be there, to have a little bit of imperfection. That’s kind of what makes it sound so full of human life.”
Certain tracks proved more challenging to develop than others. Album opener ‘Ludovici Cole Est Frigus’, sets the tone with a sweeping orchestral movement that Cole recorded and wrote one chord at a time over a two day period. Having meticulously constructed a “40-something” chord progression, he proceeded to build out melodies, including two for the singers and others for horns, strings, woodwinds and bass.
“It’s like a constant melodic flow between the middle, bottom and the top,” he explains. “I just had to break it down into tiny bite-sized chunks. I can’t sit down and just be like, ‘I’m going to make something complex.’ I’m almost amazed that it turned out like that, because I didn’t study Mozart or Bach or anything like that to any significant degree at all. I just like their music.”
If there’s one thing Cole can’t be accused of, it’s a lack of ambition. Driven by a seemingly tireless need to challenge himself, his working practice regularly sees him seeking out wilfully complex ideas and melodies.
“That happens a lot,” he states. “There have been times where I want to write something complex and it just will not happen. I won’t come up with anything. I like aiming really high, and I like it when it works out, but there are so many times where I aim really high and then it turns into nothing. And that’s just part of the process. For every song you’ve heard, there’s a thousand ideas that will never be heard.”
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The album ultimately consists of 15 compositions and two re-interpretations of tracks from ‘Quality Over Opinion’ – a medley of the operatic ‘Shallow Laughter’ and its seamless transition into sax-infused rock opus ‘Bitches’ and a stirring orchestral rendition of ‘Let it Happen’. It marks the second time that Cole has revisited the latter, following 2023’s ‘Some Unused Songs’, a collection of 11 off-cuts from the ‘Quality Over Opinion’ sessions. 
“That’s the most emotional version for me, the old one,” he notes. “I’m glad you brought that up. I’ve kind of forgotten about that. That is the stuff that I didn’t put out on ‘Quality Over Opinion’ that I was like, I actually do want these out, but I’d like it out separately. These don’t belong on the album. It’s gonna be too much.”
While Cole has never been one to let a good idea fall by the wayside, a handful of tracks recorded as part of the ‘nothing’ sessions were ultimately left on the cutting room floor. For now, it seems that ‘nothing’ and its live shows are the sum total of the project.
“I was even looking for bonus tracks for a Japan release and there comes a point where I feel like I’ve reached the limit on an album,” he states. “There’s a lot on there, but I think that there’s a certain threshold for me where it becomes too much and it kind of blurs the direct focus of what you’re trying to say… but that’s coming from a guy who put out a 20-track album the album before, so maybe I’m full of shit, but I do kind of try to consider that thought sometimes.”
So what can fans expect from the impending Roundhouse show? Well, as per previous live performances, all players will be present and correct in skeleton outfits.
“I used to wear skeleton suits at shows back in 2012, just because it’s what I could afford” he muses. ”It was widely available at Halloween stores and or Amazon and everyone looks good in that, because everyone has a skeleton. I don’t know. It just works for everybody. It’s cheap, it’s available, and it’s a classic look. I kind of like that combination of attributes. It’s full contrast. I love it, although some of the orchestra players of Metropole hate wearing it, so this time, it’s probably just going to be singers and the band wearing skeleton suits.”
That includes a roster of familiar collaborators, including vocalist Genevieve Artadi, bassist Sam Wilkes, guitarist Thom Gill and keyboard player Israel Strom. Meanwhile, the all-important orchestral support will be provided by Jules Buckley’s Orchestra, conducted by the man himself. The show marks the first time Cole has played with them and tight timings mean Cole only has one rehearsal to get everything together. 
“We only have one three hour rehearsal the day of and it’s definitely the most involved, complex music I have written so far,” he explains. “Usually we have three rehearsals of four hours or something like that… It is scary, because it takes time to internalize something and be like, ‘Oh right, this is what it sounds like with the group.’ But they’re a great orchestra. We’re all going for it.”  
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Words: Paul Weedon
Louis Cole plays Roundhouse, London on May 8th. Limited tickets are available here. ‘nothing’ is available now via Brainfeeder. Listen here
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