This Is My Home Press Release

“This Is My Home” is the debut album from New Zealand-born, Melbourne-based
producer Lanu (aka Lance Ferguson). Brimming with Future Soul and Broken Beat flavours, forward-looking production and a deep Jazz sensibility, the long player is a distinct departure from Ferguson’s work with the raw Deep Funk sound of his other project The Bamboos.
“The Funk thing to me is just one part of a whole spectrum of music that I love” says Lanu. “With this project I get to twist Soul, Jazz and Latin together with more programmed beats. The influence of West London and Detroit are big for me, but hopefully my geographical locale has given the music a slight wrinkle that listeners will pick up on.”

Indeed Lanu comes from a long line of Antipodean music makers that began when his Hawaiian Steel Guitarist grandfather recorded New Zealand’s first ever LP back in 1955. Lanu (pronounced ‘Lar-Noo’) was Ferguson’s nickname as a kid, and is also the Tongan word for ‘colour’. Getting his start as an in-demand session guitarist in the city’s Jazz, Funk and Soul scenes, Lanu kept with family tradition and released Australia’s very first Deep Funk 45 in 2001 with The Bamboos. Lanu kept busy from 2001’til 2006, forming Melbourne’s Equatorial and Local People labels and releasing music on outer-national imprints including Tru Thoughts, Ubiquity, Freestyle, Soul Source and Kay Dee. These records caught the attention of DJ’s such as Gilles Peterson, Patrick Forge, John Kong, Nik Weston, Nicola Conte, Paul Murphy and Rainer Truby. During this time Lanu also toured extensively, DJing throughout Europe, U.K and Asia and taking up guitar duties with the likes of Joe Bataan, Mark de Clive-Lowe, Bembe Segue, Alice Russell and The Quantic Soul Orchestra.

“This Is My Home” pulls in all of these influences and experiences and funnels them into an hour-long Australasian Future Soul opus.
“The album title comes from one of Aloe Blacc’s lyrics from the tune ‘Mother Earth’. “ says Lanu “…but it is indicative of what I’m trying to say with this first album. I’d like to invite people in to check out where I’ve come from musically and to see where it might take them.”
Starting off with the shuffling, ‘Conversations (intro)’ the album kicks into gear with ‘Dis-information’ (Lanu’s discourse on the media) in an up-tempo vibe complete with
Moog bass, angular Rhodes chords and an insistent break.The afore mentioned ‘Mother Earth’ teams up Quantic and Aloe Blacc for a Broken-Afro workout that calls out for us to respect the planet or face the consequences. ‘Runaway’ featuring New Zealand vocalist Cherie Mathieson and ‘Rise’ featuring Simon Grey on keys are all about bringing that 70’s/80’s Jazz/Soul sensibility into the now. “Artists like Don Blackman, Roy Ayers, George Duke and the Mizells are HUGE for me!” Lanu adds.

Bringing the sounds of Broken Beat, Hip Hop, House, Soul, Latin and Jazz together ‘This Is My Home’ is a cohesive effort that functions equally well through a club system or a pair of headphones and an iPod. Says Lanu – “I’m looking forward to taking this material out live and flipping it up into different arrangements for a club audience. It is important for me to be able to present what I do in a live setting, because that’s how the music really evolves.”