Lawrence Lek

Temple OST is the soundtrack to a nightclub that exists mostly in simulation. Lawrence Lek, a Malaysian-Chinese artist born in Frankfurt, works across architecture, video games, film, music and fiction, building a continuous universe of virtual worlds. Temple is the karaoke club from his CGI film AIDOL, shown at Sadie Coles HQ in 2019, where the fading pop star Diva plans a comeback with an AI ghostwriter. Later that year he built a physical version of the club for Transformer: A Rebirth of Wonder, the exhibition curated by Jefferson Hack at 180 The Strand in London. The Vinyl Factory was a partner in that show. The album is the music Lek made for the room, and VF counts it as his fourth.

The installation filled the basement of 180 The Strand with LCD video walls, camouflage netting, haze, spotlights and surround sound. Screens showed a CGI journey of virtual ravers walking from Temple Tube station to Diva's club, through the burning bins of a future London. Lek's own page describes the club as run by FarSight, an entertainment start-up from his fiction that turns subculture into supervised fun. He took the Japanese meaning of karaoke, empty orchestra, as the idea of a club after the party has ended. Lek completed the soundtrack after the death of a close family member, and the empty club came to stand for bereavement. VF and Mixmag describe ethereal dance tracks, haunting Vocaloid refrains and soundscapes of the near future. The seven pieces follow a path through denial, nostalgia and acceptance, from Dead Souls to the closing Prospekt, at almost seven minutes the longest. Each track carries a Chinese title next to the English one. Lek produced and mixed the album in London and Singapore, and Pete Norman mastered it. His earlier work includes Nøtel, a simulated automated luxury hotel made with Kode9. In 2024 he received the Frieze London Artist Award.

This VF edition is a single LP on 180-gram black vinyl in a printed full-colour gloss sleeve. Outer and inner sleeves carry an original CGI rendering of a bouquet of lilies, in a limited edition of 500 copies.