Gareth Emery Releases ‘The Lasers’

Today, world renowned DJ, producer and songwriter Gareth Emery released his awaited fourth album, The Lasers. The record takes a step away from Emery’s traditional DJ production method where he works with numerous collaborators and songwriters as he wrote and produced every song himself. 

“This is really the first album where I decided to go back to my band roots and do everything myself,” Emery says. “Essentially, even though I’m a DJ and a record producer, this album is like my first album as a band, I guess.” 

The co-founder of Garuda Music imprint adds that he worked with one vocalist for the album so The Lasers would truly feel like a band, adding that the album title would be the name of the band. The record features emotional, melodic, beautiful and heartfelt songs, showcasing the personal lyrics that reflect moments in Emery’s life. 

The first single from the album, “You’ll Be Ok,” was written about being onboard a plane that nearly crashed years ago. “I genuinely thought that plane was going down, and I didn’t have kids at that point but I sent my wife a text message basically saying, ‘I think this plane is going down. If it does, just know I’ve had a full life and it was my relationship with you that made it all worthwhile. And, basically, you’ll be okay,’” Emery says. 

The track “Elise” was written about his two-year-old daughter being in the hospital for 10 days last year. She was in Ibiza while Emery was in Los Angeles, so Emery says the track is about the feeling of being so far away from your child when they need you. The song “I Saw Your Face” takes a different tone from “You’ll Be Ok” and “Elise” as it’s about when Emery lived in Manchester for five years. The producer says he used to eat lunch at one particular restaurant very often, so when he went back to visit the city and the restaurant he found himself expecting to run into the same people he used to see there, even though he hadn’t lived in Manchester for seven years. He adds that “I Saw Your Face” is about the memories and feelings his trip back to Manchester evoked.

Though some might find it difficult to open up and be so vulnerable about past personal experiences, Emery notes it was a “remarkably cathartic” experience. “I didn’t simply enjoy writing lyrics about what’s going on in my life right now, but what I really enjoyed was going to a time in the past writing lyrics at those times,” he adds. 

Emery says it took him until this point in his career to write his own lyrics because he had convinced himself he couldn’t do it. Once he realized he had to learn how to do every part of the process to create The Lasers, thus forcing him to write his own lyrics, he found songwriting to be natural. He adds that it helped he was only vulnerable to an extent, as he left enough of the songs to be up to interpretation by his fans. 

“I always thought that level of vulnerability was not something I wanted to do, but when you start to write songs you kind of realize that there is actually a way to do it where you can be as vulnerable as you need but you can also leave something open to interpretation, which I like to do as well,” Emery says. “I don’t want to give away 100% of what is in my head, mainly because once I release a song, that song belongs to the world. It doesn’t belong to me anymore.”

Learn more about Gareth Emery here.