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Luminox Talks Trap, Electric Forest and Rising Stars [WRR Exclusive Interview]

August 12, 2014 By Sebastian Aguirre

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This interview was co-conducted and written with WRR writer Tyler Hubin

David Lopez, the mind behind Luminox sat down with us at The Hudson Music Project to discuss influences, festivals, and the evolution of trap music. He had just finished up throwing down a nasty set in the Circus Tent before the skies opened up. His set was infused with trap, hip-hop, and unreleased tracks from start to finish.

Being smack dab in the middle of the trap movement, Luminox has been in the center of the whirlwind that the genre has been for the past two years. This has given him an inside perspective on the inner workings of the industry, and trap in particular. We were lucky enough to get a few minutes of David’s time so we can pick his brain about all things trappin’.

We began speaking about the rise of the genre and his career rising with it. If you dig through his SoundCloud you can see that his first published songs were dubstep with elements of trapstyle such as snare and tons of bass. He transitioned into trap with songs like “Rusty Tank” and “Dirty Dirty” before making the “Rattle” remix that shot him out of the proverbial cannon and into the spotlight for trap producers. We asked about this rise.

“People took it further than we thought they could. Further than we even thought we could go with the sounds that we had. My wildest dreams are pretty fuckin crazy, lets not go there… We took it pretty far. We took it cross genre, we now have house music DJ’s that make it a point to put trap music in their set.”

Next we referenced an old quote to put into perspective this rise. In 2012 he said, “the genre is very young, it’s new, people are beginning to catch on, and it sounds awesome. I also think the sounds are really basic at this point; people are going to start thinking outside the box when producing. Everything evolves, and I think the Trap style has a long rage.” We asked if he thought that this quote has held true almost a full two years later,

“You really have to stand out right now. You cant bring your classic noises and expect a reaction, you better bring something really original or just some really well made shit to the table. You’ll be one in a million these days because trap music is undoubtedly one of the hottest and most played genres in EDM right now. Even on the radio!”

We brought up “Dark Horse” by Katy Perry being trap to which he responded

“I didn’t totally know how to feel about it. I like it, I thought it was a cool song and I think it opens doors for us producers as song creators. Because we can write songs for the radio. To know that the club is receptive to that is awesome…to know that they are familiar with our sound now is crazy, because its almost a pop music standard right now at this point to have (trap elements.) Just like dubstep drops were a pop music standard a few years ago.”

On trap’s longevity he had this to share

“Trap is based on hip-hop/club music whereas dubstep didn’t have much of a commercial foundation. People hear dubstep and can get down to it for the most part. For a lot of people who are in the pop music world or the hip hop world, dubstep sounds a little aggressive. I think it will last simply based on the fact that its such a familiar sound (club hip-hop).”

Two weeks earlier David played at Electric Forest, one of our favorite festivals of the summer. He touched on topics such as interacting with fans on golf carts, the one-of-a-kind vibes at camping festivals, and when the environment was brought up he had this to say

“The festival site was very nice. Also, they did this thing where they gave people the opt to help out a bit and clean up the grounds of trash and such. The people that brought the most stuff got to ride in a golf cart around the festival and chat with artists. I thought it was a really cool idea. The atmostphere of the event was just amazing at night with the lights and color.

Lastly we love when artists shout out smaller artists grinding to make it in the scene. We asked Luminox for some artists he was down with to shine some light on artists that deserve attention. He ran down a whole list of names that included one of our favorites, Lindsay Lowend along with,