Lucas Trevisan, the seven-piece-one-man-band behind Lux Trevis has debuted his first album. It’s called Welcome to the Game Galaxy; a mystical waterfall of psychedelic sounds, brought together in a flow state of musicianship and intention.
Lux Trevis unveils an unseen world of funk-fusion in Welcome to the Gama Galaxy; a journey to the realms of Gama.
Self-described as “psychedelic groove,” Lux Trevis’ largely instrumental sound is an ultraviolet spectrum, tapping into jazz-psych, blues, funk, electronica and folk. If Fantasia was Walt Disney’s visualisation of classical mastery, then the Gama Galaxy is Trevisan’s vehicle for animation.
Following the release of his 2019 EP Diving Deep, Trevisan has become an integral member of local Sydney bands, including psych-rockers BREIZERS and surf-pop darlings Tuppaware Party. Here he returns to his roots of looped soliloquy and perpetual jam, flaunting fourteen new tracks.
The album opens with Gateway to Gama, a treacly bluesy backdrop with humorous surfer-dude number one and super dude number two narration. Spoken-word storytelling sits by the wayside and allows for licks of feminine flute to wash over the Dazed and Confused-esque chats. This is a story of friendship as much as is it of transcendental musings.
Throughout most of the album, the bass is never ignorable, more melodic than need be but never wanting. Just when you think you’re all funked out, a skilful electricity of lead guitar pulls you back out. Gama Ghetto unveils a seductive jazz, the organ-like keys making for that involuntarily top-lip curl. You know the sax is coming before you hear it, at least your body does anyway.
Ghet to the Surf is sprinkled with samples of the sounds of a lighter being struck, waves crashing, and pop cultural references. There’s simply no shying away from the core themes and it allows for the tracks to breathe and remain relatable. There’s the push pull of professionalism and skillset against the fun and freedom of creating music – Trevisan never lets you take the music too seriously. A real return to surf-rock is clung onto throughout the twangy strings on Rainbow Ryders. The sequential flow of each track feels important and also completely irrelevant.
Tuppaware Party’s Shelly Fitzpatrick features in the aptly titled Gama Fairy. Her breathy falsetto vocals rise and croon a feathery weightlessness over Trevisan’s finer plucking moments. And for the first time we’re less aware of the instrumental denseness but are carried through with a lyrical story. Roll Baby puts down the joint and picks up the whisky soda and a masculinity is reclaimed.
If there’s a hero on this record, it’s Gama Disco. Percussion is brought to the foreground with the repetition of glass shattering tst’s, and tin-can bashing beats. The inclusions are welcome and the toe-tapping is infectious. I’m reminded of him playing it to me for the first time on the drive back from the beach, post-açai and surf. It seems fitting and, in retrospect, a divine moment. There are no spoken words fringing this on, no featuring vocalists, just purely Lux Trevis and truth.
If the Gama Galaxy exists somewhere in the world, it’s awash with an array of colour – but mainly, if you had to pick, that aquamarine flush where green and blue are in harmony. You get the sense that this body of work was written by a man in love: with life, with Gama Fairies, and at the centre of it all, with music.
Double-knot your laces, or better yet go barefoot and dive into the full album below:
