Neon Dream Pop

Dreamy, summery, shimmering synth-pop… A more perfect sound you could not have at the spring festival that gets the ball rolling, Parklife, and New York's St Lucia have this in spades. The brainchild of Jean-Phillip Grobler, St Lucia have only come to prominence in the last year or so, kick-started with debut EP Neon Gold.

Just about to finish up his debut album, Grobler – who incidentally grew up a choirboy in South Africa – reveals he's been at it for far longer than 12 months. “Because some of the tracks from the EP are going to be on the album, I'd say I've been working on this album for about four years. But we're talking 11 or 12 tracks out of probably 80 or so songs and countless other ideas from that time. The album is really close, actually, probably about one month away. It's at a similar point to when you're tidying up your apartment and in the end you're left with all these annoying things like a pen and staples and a ball of yarn and some sticker your sister gave you and you have to figure out what to do with them.”

As for his writing process, he says, “It's pretty random actually. I rarely 'try' to write something. Normally, an idea will just come into my head, and either I'll record it on my phone to work on it later… Then over a period of weeks or months I'll add this or that and gradually it will develop alongside a bunch of other songs which, like I said earlier, will become an album. It's mainly fun and rewarding, but not without its fair share of torture here and there.”

Most importantly, for Grobler, is that St Lucia tackle pop exactly how he wants to, and the producer reveals his love for the genre in all its colourful forms and no matter their production values. “I absolutely love pop music with a high production value (as well as the opposite), like Tears For Fears or Peter Gabriel. Some, however, would argue that those records are over-produced…” he says. “I just like to keep working on something until it makes me feel the way I want it to make me feel. Normally, that feeling is just there when I start an idea and am excited about it. My litmus test though, is when the end product makes me feel the same way as it did when I came up with the idea, or even better. What interests me about pop the most is that it is so divisive, and so hard to define. It is a lot more difficult to create than what appears in the end. Great pop, I think, is like a beautifully designed piece of modern furniture – deceptively simple.”

Obviously starting out as a producer means Grobler has had to transfer St Lucia from the studio into the live arena, and it's taken some time. “It's definitely not the easiest process, but it's become easier the longer we've been doing this. I have a five-, sometimes six-piece band of amazing musicians who help me to achieve the sound on the EP. Again, it's about whether it feels right, and whether we feel like the audience is going to feel as excited by the live performance as they do by the record.”

He brings that experience to Parklife, and the producer cites the festival as a turning point for where he knew the project was on to bigger and better things. “Each time we hit a new benchmark of the amount of people we've played to, it's an amazing feeling… Just the whole experience of the project growing is pretty amazing and I often have to pinch myself. I think that booking the Parklife festival was the big one for me. It was incredible to me that just over one year after playing our first show, we'll be playing a travelling festival in Australia. Unreal!”