Son Lux Release New EP 'Risk of Make Believe'

Son Lux, the band of composers enlisted to score 2023’s genre-defying Best Picture, Everything Everywhere All At Once, is back with their first release of new music since their prismatic 49-track soundtrack. 

Risk Of Make Believe is a new EP that encapsulates what made the experimental rock trio a perfect fit for the film: an unlikely alchemy of beguiling sounds and heart-on-sleeve passion. It is further evidence of Son Lux's wild creativity, voracious appetite for experimentation, and ability to distill seemingly disparate universes of sound into a signature unmistakably their own. 

The band has announced that all streaming and digital sales of Risk of Make Believe will go to LA fire relief efforts for the foreseeable future. 

"Friends, today we release our new EP, Risk of Make Believe, on all digital platforms. It feels strange to be sharing new music that has brought us such joy while we’re also feeling such heartbreak for our friends and colleagues experiencing myriad levels of loss due to the LA fires. As someone proud to call this city home, it’s been devastating watching this happen in my own backyard, and while my family and home have been spared any damage, it’s not lost on me that the collective trauma of loss will be deeply felt among our creative community for some time.

With that in mind, we have decided to donate all proceeds from this EP for the foreseeable future to @sweetreliefmusiciansfund, a non-profit who have long been supporting musicians in need. They’re collecting funds to specifically address the loss of music equipment, medical bills related to the event, and vital living expenses. Their website also includes a growing list of mutual aid organizations in the LA area.

This effort feels small in the face of so much need in the world, but it’s at least one thing we can do that feels right. Thank you for listening, and let’s take care of each other," said Ryan Lott.

Patience and ease pervade the EP’s title track, “Risk Of Make Believe.” The song begins with what sounds like drums through a vocoder up in the choir loft. Ian Chang and Rafiq Bhatia join with a precise but pliant groove, drums and bass moving together as if in slow motion. What unfolds is an unhurried song that never feels restless in its gradual evolution. Ryan Lott sings, “What’s the risk of make believe?” weaving a plea to give oneself permission to change through tessellations of crystallizing guitar. 

“Don’t Say It’s Too Late,” the EP’s second single (December 5th, 2024), features Grammy Award-winning arranger and string player Rob Moose (Bon Iver, Paul Simon, John Legend, yMusic). The interplay between Lott’s voice, electronics, and strings creates a sweeping winter ballad balancing longing and loss, precariously reaching for the hope of reconciliation.

More traditional tracks give way to a pair of slowly unfurling songs on the meditative back half of the EP. Fans of the band will recognize the minimal, repeated refrains as a return to Son Lux’s roots. “Cocoon” holds space for metamorphosis over seven minutes, its spare, cyclical form belying a steady, relentless revolution. Detuned Tunis drums and prepared guitars shed like a chrysalis from around a choir of Lott’s evolving vocals, propelled by Chang and Bhatia’s sinewy rhythm section sensibility. 

The EP closes with “Take Your Time With Me,” a slow-burn anthem that showcases the band's ability to reconcile hooky pop and thrilling experimentation. Spacious clearings of sound give way to technicolor thickets, with Chang’s drumming thrillingly pitting splatter-paint abstraction against nod-inducing viscerality. The EP leaves us right where we began—imagining and longing for whatever reinvention might follow.

Photo credit: Alex Kozobolis

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