cloud collecting #12: Inquiri
adopting the flow of music into the body, embracing being new at things + rebuilding concepts of love
cloud collecting includes 3-question interviews with women and gender-expansive artists discussing their creativity. This week I have Los Angeles-based DJ, producer, remixer, and teacher Lacey Harris (aka Inquiri + Lacey IQ) sharing some insight into her history and recent offerings. I met Lacey in 2014 while she was working at an LA electronic music school with my husband James and we have been friends ever since. Her recent album ‘See You Someday’ was released last month on Past Inside the Present.
Los Angeles-based Lacey Harris (aka Inquiri, aka Lacey IQ) produces, remixes, and DJs a vast array of styles that engage the mind and body in equal measure, with a deep-seated reverence for both the organic and the mechanical. An innate drive for eclecticism echoes her guiding philosophy that no person feels one way all the time, and she sees every effort – whether ephemeral or documented – as a vital statement of self, and an open hand to the disaffected outsider.
Away from the communal pulse of the dancefloor, where she plays everything from deep house and techno to drum & bass and downtempo, she makes sprawling ambient work and bass-heavy, sample-driven singles, each a puzzle piece in a vibrant, multifaceted life. Lacey’s own voice is her most precious instrument; in her work as Inquiri, it is often layered into towering harmonies, playing against glitchy electronics, trip-hop cadences, and arpeggiated synth lines. Magnum opus, See You Someday (2024), grew from ten years of patient reflection on loss, and the complicated prospect of finding a place in the immensity of the cosmos.
Primarily self-taught, she uses intuition and experimentation to guide her compositional impulses, as well as an understanding of the importance of mixing, and a fascination with the ways in which music can be used for deep meditation, unfettered movement, and a thousand other things guided by mood and circumstance. In addition to her professional work as a director of a handful of artist development programs at a music college, she maintains a weekly DJ livestream on Twitch, Radio IQ, which provides a regular platform for new ideas and explorations.
1. Your roots are in DJing electronic music since the late 90s. I would love to hear when the moment clicked that you wanted to start producing your own music and how it feels to balance both these sides of your creative self.
Being a DJ for a few years before I began producing was a good thing, because I obsessed so much over electronic music during my learning period of DJing (and dancing) that I inadvertently gained a fairly deep understanding of the various structures, flow, and sounds within a variety of electronic music styles. I am not classically trained in music, but I learned to physically feel my way through it, sort of adopting the flow of the music directly into my body. Producing came as a natural next step, but it took some time and effort to make it possible--back then, especially living where I was at the time, it was much more difficult to access equipment for making electronic music or recording in general. The first thing I did outside of straight mixing for rave parties and clubs was to sit on the floor with my records and turntables, experimenting with creating unusual blends with my vinyl collection--mixing things that weren't dance music with my beat tools, things like that. In 2001 I was listening to Bjork's Vespertine album on a daily basis, and one night my sleeping brain cooked up an alternate-music version of Sun In My Mouth, and it lodged itself in my mind and made me start thinking about making my own music. Shortly after, a friend of mine mentioned two words I'd never heard before: audio engineering. I hopped on my dial-up internet connection and searched those terms, and found a school housed in a pro studio in my hometown (Dallas) where a lot of great musicians had recorded. I moved myself to Dallas a matter of months later to attend the school. I learned hands-on about audio, recording and signal flow, mixing, writing songs, and producing for others. However, it wasn't until some DJ friends of mine shared cracked copies of Acid Pro and Reason with me, along with piles of CDRs full of samples and loops, that I really started to create something of my own. To my surprise, almost none of it was dance music. As for balancing my alter egos—I almost never feel balanced in that regard, ha. I go back and forth constantly, though I tend to feel happiest writing non-prescriptive, experimental music. However, my dance music experience directly informs everything I have done, ambient included. I have something coming out later this year that will illustrate the first real face-off between Lacey IQ and Inquiri. I am excited about that.
2. Your recent album, 'See you Someday,' released on the label we are both on (Past Inside the Present) was created over the span of 10 years. Can you pick one of your favorite songs on the record and explain what the creative process was like (gear, emotions, story)?
If I had to pick just one, our song together, Our Souls Kissed, is one of the pieces I'm most proud of, because I exercised just about every "special sauce" technique I have on it. To begin with, there are five voices--2010 me, 2010 voice of a dear friend with a penchant for saying incredibly profound things completely unprompted, 2024 me, 2016 marine eyes, and 2024 marine eyes. There are many subliminal details sunk in deep, as well as your sampled, chopped, and replayed vocals (one of my favorite parts of the song), and a lot of crazy sound design and soft-distorted swells built into the arrangement. I often prefer using things that aren't drums as rhythmic elements, and this song is full of that stuff. As you well know, this song went through many, many versions before arriving at its final form. I am grateful that this song finally found its way out, and that I finally reached a skill level that satisfied what was required to honor it. It was definitely a challenge, but a most rewarding one.
The story—I once fell deeply, profoundly in love, but not just in the usual ways--it was a spirit connection which I'd never experienced, and it altered my concept of love forever. Like many such stories, it wasn't meant to last, and the original main parts of the song were created fairly immediately after that initial chapter of the story ended. The love and the friendship remained, and the song encapsulates the process of coming to terms with the change and trying to navigate a way forward after the extreme high came crashing down. Part of me hoping it could change, but knowing it wouldn't, and then somehow figuring out how to be at peace with it all and rebuild my concept of love yet again.
3. How do you cloud collect (connect to childlike wonder) in your creativity?
These days, I find that exploring other artistic mediums allows me to access more of the excitement I had when I started making music—photography, video, and graphic design are currently giving me some low-pressure outlets and the enjoyment of learning new things. With music, after more than two decades, it's become more challenging to connect to feelings of wonder, since in addition to my own music, it's such a huge part of my day-to-day life due largely to my job as a music college director helping other musicians find their path. I sometimes struggle to get excited at times, likely because I spend so much of my time and energy dealing with business, egos, opinions, analytics, social media, "numbers," and other nonsense. I actually enjoy being new at things these days--that used to give me anxiety, but I embrace it now.
I also obsessively collect dialogue recordings from TV, film, and games, which I use to construct and/or inspire a lot of my storytelling. I get very excited when I hear a piece of impactful, meaningful dialogue, and I race to capture it. I also really love remixing and doing collaborations with other artists, when I can find the time. These practices are some of the best for injecting inspiration into me when I'm feeling low on supply. I also love surrounding myself with people who are way more skilled at things than I am—other people's brilliance invigorates me.
I also recommend listening to Lacey’s album Seven (2022) + the breathtaking remix she did of my song, ‘you’ll find me’ (2023) via the amazing Stereoscenic Records.