MC Lars | Main

MC Lars makes post-punk laptop rap. It's not a category exactly, but he's working on that. Musically, his songs come from computer driven beats, samples and a small pile of instruments that sit next to his Stanford University dorm room bed. The MC Lars experiment began on his parent's couch, where at an early age he performed groundbreaking songs about not wanting to clean up his room. He was experimenting with tape recorders and computers by the time he hit the fifth grade, but it wasn't until the ripe old age of fifteen that he found Beck and discovered the concept of home-recording beats and music together. Soon after, he began performing regularly at hometown open mic nights, ultimately pulling together a style that was inexplicably all his own. As his home recordings developed, he took on the name MC Lars Horris - eventually dropping the Horris. Lars moved to Oxford at this point in the tale, a change which ultimately put him on the path to making music his full time ambition. He began playing gigs all over town, on any bill that would have him (including shows with folkies, punk bands and even Mark Gardener from Ride). He quickly drew attention from local label Truck Records, who picked him up immediately. Radio Pet Fencing was quickly released by the label. After the young MC returned to the US, he knew what he had to do: Take the past ten years of experimentation and influence and somehow amalgamate these sounds. How could he fuse a sound that combines his awkwardly assembled influences, ranging from Weird Al Yankovic to KRS One to The Sex Pistols? He started by quitting his sometimes punk band Amphoteric and getting to work, crafting beats and music in his studio and finishing them up with producer Mike Sapone (Brand New, Movielife, Taking Back Sunday). The result of this effort comes in the form of The Laptop EP.