Morgane Lhote aka Hologram Teen creates atmospheric electronic music that is equal parts dystopian horror movie soundtrack and disco dance banger. A French expat, she now lives in Los Angeles, after stints in London and New York City. Hologram Teen’s newest record, Between The Funk and the Fear, released by London label Polytechnic Youth, is a tribute to the places Lhote has lived, as well as her love of cinema, video games, and a full spectrum of pop music. After decades as a professional musician, recording and touring in bands including Stereolab, Hologram Teen is Morgane’s first solo record. It is a project that embraces her diverse musical influences and a dark, futuristic, queer aesthetic.
Morgane and I first met in Brooklyn in the late 00’s, when we bonded over our mutual love for the ridiculous elements of 60s French yéyé music and style, Feminist theory, over-the-top sci-fi thrillers like Escape from New York, and the “classic” 80s French teen melodrama La Boum. Between the Funk and the Fear brings together these influences to create an album that rides the line between danceable and experimental. I had a chance to catch up with Lhote over email about her record, and the experiences and pop culture that have influenced it.
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Eleanor Whitney: You’ve been playing in bands for decades. How did you come to play music and, specifically, electronic music? What were some of your early musical influences or inspirations?
Morgane Lhote: I was really lucky in that my parents gave me a turntable and some of their records when I was 4 or 5. The two records I played constantly were the soundtrack to Grease and Breakfast in America by Supertramp. They also gave me this really weird record by Guy Béart, Futur Fiction Fantastique, which had this amazing futuristic cover by French cartoonist Mœbius.
When I was a teenager, I already knew I wanted to be a professional musician and at that point in time I really loved the Bangles, the B-52’s, and new wave bands in general like Talking Heads and Tom Tom Club.
I started playing in bands from the 1980s, but nothing serious, it was more like jamming with people from high school and I played drums back then. A couple years later, I also started playing guitars in local Paris bands with friends. It was nice to get that experience and learn to play with other people.
I didn’t start making electronic music until 5 years ago when I bought [the music-making software] Ableton Live 9 and suddenly I was like: I can do this on my own!
EW: How did Hologram Teen come about? What inspired you to make the shift between playing in other peoples’ bands and writing your own music?
ML: When I first moved to NYC in 2006, I had in mind to start a country band and jammed a few times with friends but it never really lead to anything. I guess I was growing tired of constant compromises and dysfunctional relationships within bands.
Starting Hologram Teen has been hugely liberating in that I have full reign over what I want to do and don’t have to respond to anyone else. I do still have an ongoing dialogue with my mixers and producers, Rich and Jonny, but that’s very often after the songs are written. I can’t pretend to be proficient enough at mixing, it can make or break a song. I know the basics but finding good mixers is rare!
Electronic music seemed like the logical progression since you can incorporate so many different genres and not be bound to any aesthetics musically. I literally listen to everything so it’s nice to mesh that in all together in my songs.
EW: A lot of your music has a cinematic quality and your album artwork has a certain psychedelic aesthetic. Beyond musical influences, what are some of the pop culture figures, movies, or artists that have influenced Hologram Teen? I, of course, noticed the sonic nod to Escape from New York in “Escape from Paris,” and I love the creatures that inhabit your songs like the disco demon and tracksuit minotaur, but I’d love to hear more about what influences you draw on when you write music.
ML: I grew up around progressive rock sounds and French psychedelic comics in the 1970s and that really influenced my musical and visual sensibilities. As a kid, I would spend days on end reading my parents’ comics collection and the bande dessinées in Pilote Magazine. I was entranced by artist like Fred and the Philémon series, Nikita Mandryka and Le Concombre masqué, and last but not least Jean-Claude Forest (of Barbarella fame) who was the inspiration for the Between the Funk and the Fear cover.
Soundtracks and films are also a huge influence; I adore the works of Francois de Roubaix and Jean-Claude Vannier and their string arrangements, and also have a huge soft spot for John Carpenter (as you noted) and the 1970s Italian horror movie scores of Goblin and Fabio Frizzi. I like to not take myself too seriously and be playful with my music, so a little dose of tongue-in-cheek humor goes a long way.
You are the first one to mention the creatures that inhabit my songs and that means a lot! Eleanor, I know we also bonded over the movie La Boum and I love that cheesy 1980s era of French pop culture. So to resume, my main influences are older French comics and pop culture, Italian horror movie soundtracks, and Japanese animes like Captain Future and Grendizer.
So as much as I can dislike France and the way women and immigrants are treated there, I’m still very influenced and attached to what was around me as a kid growing up in the 1970s and 1980s. Aussi Disco Démon and Tracksuit Minotaur te font la bise! [Disco Demon and Tracksuit Minotaur send you a kiss!]
EW: You grew up in France, lived in London, then New York, and now live in LA—has the West Coast had an impact on your music or how you think of yourself as a musician?
ML: That’s an interesting question. I’m mostly holed up in my home studio and don’t play live yet so I haven’t built much of a music community here at the moment, but I hope I will soon. It hasn’t redefined how I think of myself as a musician but it definitely has impacted my music tastes. Los Angeles loves its astral jazz, in the vein of Kamasi Washington, and it’s often playing on KCRW at night when I’m driving.
I always liked that sort of jazz, especially Alice Coltrane and Pharaoh Sanders, but it seemed to seep into my subconscious even more recently. So when I was finishing Between the Funk and the Fear, I noticed songs I had written later on in the process like “Magique Afrique” were super jazzy-sounding and I was like “What the hell?”
EW: Hologram Teen sounds seeped in the history of electronic music. Electronic music doesn’t strike me as a “scene” where women, especially queer women, are highly visible as composers and music makers. Is this the case? Do you feel like this is changing? Are there unsung heroines we should know about? How have you been able to find a musical community that supports what you do and who you are?
ML: I think there are lots of women in electronic music, but they are often more experimental-sounding so they might not appeal to a super broad audience. Good examples are Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith and Julianna Barwick. Also as in all other forms of art, there is a definite lack of representation for women, which is pretty ironic since a lot of electronic music pioneers were female: Laurie Spiegel, Pauline Oliveros, Daphne Oram, Suzanne Ciani, and Delia Derbyshire.
I can’t speak for other queer artists, but a major one is Wendy Carlos, a transgender electronic musician who rocks the Moog like no other. She came out as transgender in a 1979 Playboy interview and it didn’t impact her career negatively from what I can gather.
EW: Do you have any plans to play live or is Hologram Teen mostly a studio project?
ML: To be honest, it’s been a home studio project so far with the original foray into professional studios to record live instruments. My producer Rich Bennett has a studio called Acme Hall in Park Slope, Brooklyn, so we record live drums, bass, and strings there. He has loads of gear so that always comes in handy during mixing as well! There are no plans to play live yet, the bass and drum parts are actually quite complicated so I would have to re-arrange the songs. But if the right opportunity came along, I would definitely be open to it.
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In the United States you can order Between the Funk and the Fear directly from Hologram Teen’s bandcamp page.
