Aiwa Laurel (More commonly known as Ava Laurel, or stage name Lava La Rue) is a West London based visual artist , musician

and founder of NiNE8 collective.

 

Lava La Rue (an anagram of the phonetic spelling of their birth name) debuted in 2018 with single ‘Widdit’ - made whilst La Rue lived in Tokyo with Japanese collective Tokyo Vitamin.

 

Widdit went on to get spotlighted by Colors Berlin and became an anthem for Lava’s underground network of DIY artists. The song gathered millions of streams and online support, establishing Lava as an independent artist within the alternative UK scene. La Rue followed up the single release with two projects "Letra EP" (2018) and the "Stitches Mixtape" (2019). The projects secured La Rue a sold out headline tour, major festival bookings, alongside collaborations between Lava and artistic establishments such as Tate Modern and the British Fashion Council.

 

In 2020 Lava La Rue announced the release of their third official solo project "BUTTER-FLY EP" which was written in collaboration with Deb Never and Clairo, with production credits from Isom Innis (Foster the People), Vegyn (Frank Ocean), Dan Holloway (Dora Jar) Courage (Foxes) and more.

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BUTTER-FLY dropped early 2021 and solidified Lava's transition from the Alternative Hip Hop focused projects that their previous work was known for, to a more indie/psychedelic RnB space - noticeably singing more and working on guitar based productions.

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Lava states "I plan to expand this new world of psychedelic guitar based productions i've been working on fused with everything i've learned coming up on the alternative UK RnB scene...I think there's something oddly complimentary about fusing the lyricism of British rap with dreamy sounds you'd hear coming out of bands like Tame Impala...who knows this could be the sound of the 2020s...at least it'll be for me in 2022!"

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