A Quick Chat with Lucidbloom

Dust explores the exhaustion of holding onto love that’s already faded — what personal or collective experiences inspired this theme?
This song was a reflection of realising you have been holding onto something heavy for so long, that is constantly dragging you down, and you hit that moment of no return where you decide ‘no more!’ It’s a moment of reckoning, of shedding the weight, and the liberation of letting go.

As sisters co-writing, we share a lot with each other and dive into both personal and shared experiences together, and this feeling really resonated at a time we were feeling empowered to make the conscious and proactive decision to let go of what no longer serves us. Something we feel everyone can relate to at some point - a relationship, situation, collaboration, work - reaching the tipping point where the love is gone and you need to roll it over the edge.

The track balances heavy imagery with a sense of liberation — how did you find that middle ground between despair and release in the songwriting process?
This song moves through the feeling of being trapped in that despair - the dragging up a hill, feet slipping on the gravel, but it’s all to get to the top of the summit, to roll the boulder off the hill. We wanted to capture the transition, where the balance shifts, you’ve lost the will to put up with the bullshit and you let it go.

We’ve always been visual writers, tapping into more cinematic explorations of what we are writing about, something you can play out like a movie in your head. After all the poetry though, our favourite line at the end is ‘Zero, all my love fucked off, is dust’ - it’s the release, the liberation, and a new attitude.

Sonically, Dust leans into sharper dynamics and groove-driven basslines — how does this evolution reflect where LUCIDBLOOM are headed musically?
In our new body of work, we’ve kept the signature lush atmospherics and melting harmonies, but this track in particular marked a turning point for us sonically, focusing in on more driving beats and basslines, something you can lock into that propels the energy and motion of the song while still featuring the waterfall of layers we love to build.

This is something you’ll find more across our releases to come, our creative process together has evolved, we’ve experimented more with our sound, and the work is much more personal than previous material.

Collaboration seems central to your identity as a multidisciplinary collective. How did working with glitch artist Naomi Oliver shape the vision for the Dust video?
Like the central themes in dust - working with Naomi was liberating. We wanted to explore something more abstract for this track, that captured beauty, tension and release, and we love how Naomi’s work intersects between beauty, technology and distortion.

In contrast to previous film collaborations - this time there were no shot lists, designed sets, structured plans or film crews. We met up in a warehouse in the Blue Mountains and experimented with different cameras, movements and lenses. Then she took the material away to data bends and digitally animate over the material.

She’s incredibly generous and open, always experimenting and pushing boundaries - and a dream to work with. Her aesthetic is very unique, and it was exciting to not know what to fully expect, but to completely trust in the outcome. It’s fun to get material back and see things through her eyes. A strong collaboration needs a lot of trust and working with artists we admire and can share a vision with means we can let go of control and genuinely collaborate on unique outcomes that explore our music visually.

I love the image of writing in the back of a truck — how does that informal, snack-fuelled process influence the energy and authenticity of your songs?
The energy of our songwriting has completely changed since writing in the truck! We used to have long but infrequent days in a big studio and we swapped it out with short sharp sessions in this tiny creative microcosm. There’s no distractions because we’re literally shut inside the truck… we often only have 2 - 2.5 hours to work on a song at any one time.

It’s made us really productive. We don’t labour over details - we seem to be able to lock in to a good vibe very quickly. We’re often commenting on how easy the process feels together and how quickly ideas turn into songs in this environment. We really lean into everyone’s strengths, and have fostered a super supportive and energetic environment that has allowed us to be both vulnerable to explore more authentic songwriting, and motivated to push ourselves creatively.

With your upcoming EP and launch shows blending music, light, and art, what kind of sensory world do you hope audiences will step into at a LUCIDBLOOM performance?
We have a really special performance planned for our DUST launch show at Oxford Art Factory on October 3, we’ll be inviting Naomi Oliver to do live visuals alongside our performance so instead of being an audience member watching a band we will be trying to create an environment where sound and melting dreamy visuals offer you different options to engage and immerse yourself in the experience.

We want to dial up the hypnotic and mesmerising aspects of our show with this collaboration.