Stephen Ramsay Talks Sequence Three Ahead of the Constellation Records Release

Transmission 425: Interview with Light Conductor

Light Conductor complete their trilogy this September with Sequence Three, the closing chapter of a project Jace Lasek and Stephen Ramsay began in 2019 with Sequence One, followed by Sequence Two in 2021. Lasek, who also plays in The Besnard Lakes, and Ramsay, formerly of Young Galaxy, formed the duo after meeting at SXSW in 2005. Olga Goreas, also of The Besnard Lakes, has been a fixture of the group’s recording and touring lineup ever since. Titles for each record, as for the songs themselves, come from a collection of 1960s and 70s science and technology paperbacks that Lasek and Goreas keep at home.

Title: Sequence 3
Artist: Light Conductor
Release Date: 2026-09-25
Genres: Ambient, Drone, Electronica, Experimental Music
Label: Constellation Records
Description: Stephen Ramsay of Light Conductor talks Sequence Three, out Sept 25 on Constellation Records, the final part of a trilogy started in 2019.

The albums are built from long improvised sessions on restored vintage synthesisers, among them an Arp Odyssey, an EMS VCS3, a Sequential Circuits Prophet 5 and Prophet VS, an Oberheim SEM Pro, a Korg Microkorg and Monotron, a Roland CR-5000 and a Roland Juno 60, later reworked in the studio. There, Lasek and Ramsay apply the production instincts honed on records for Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Suuns and Patrick Watson to material that started out as raw jam. Uncut called the results “heavyweight analogue synth nirvana”; Electronic Sound went with “fabulous, epic, shimmeringly radiant kosmische.” Sequence Three keeps that method intact while pushing further into an unease that has run under the project since the start, audible on “Ghost City Radio,” built on a spare bass guitar line under a spoken-word sample of a doomsaying street preacher.

Ahead of the album’s release on Constellation, Ramsay spoke to Retro Futurista about the trilogy’s origins, the gear behind it, and what comes next.

What kind of music shaped your taste before you became a professional musician?

Stephen: I grew up listening to a lot of British music – my cousin in Scotland would send tapes of the BBC radio chart countdown when I was like 11 or 12, and there was so much in those tapes that I wasn’t hearing in rural Vancouver Island, you know? I heard Depeche Mode, New Order, The Jam, bands like that and it kind of blew the doors open for me. Rap music was my punk – my parents were young enough to know bands like The Sex Pistols and The Clash and they weren’t scared of them. I think they were a bit concerned when I brought home Yo! Bum Rush The Show by Public Enemy and I knew I had my rebellion music set. In my teens it was just a mix of rap and British music. I loved the baggy era, Madchester – The Stone Roses first album was a benchmark for me, as was Bummed by Happy Mondays. When Napster hit – the floodgates just opened and I was exposed to all these amazing leftfield, and obscure acts and genres, I could finally listen to Krautrock, electro records, old funk and disco. Drone. Metal. Everything was there.

What first brought the three of you together to start Light Conductor?

Stephen: I met Jace and Olga at SXSW in 2005 when I was in Stars, and we hit it off immediately. Jace and I are part of the Tall Left Handed Blonde Men Of Rock club, of which there are only a handful of members. My band Young Galaxy recorded its first record with Jace – we just had good rapport and similar musical interests and backgrounds. We coveted each other’s left handed guitar collection. One thing led to another, and we decided it would be nice to do a project that focused around synths, as I had just started to obtain old analog synths and dabble in midi and things like that. At the time I had a Sequential Circuits Prophet 600 and Jace had a Roland Juno 60 and the first Light Conductor record is just largely us messing around with those two synths a lot. We just hit record and improvised – we had no plan or blueprint for the project and we liked it that way. It was fun and low stakes, a real antidote to the more complicated dynamic of own sprawling bands.

How does your group dynamic differ here compared to Young Galaxy or The Besnard Lakes?

Stephen: I touched on it before, but being in a band was like being in a relationship with 5 other people. It’s a lot of work to make work, a lot of egos and agendas and expectations to manage. As the respective leaders or organizers of our bands, I think Jace and I kind of knew if we did a project together, it would have to kind of be the opposite of that. Light Conductor’s music is very process based. We set up the machines, get them talking to each other and just kind of tweak knobs and listen as we play. It’s all improvised. So as players in it, it’s more meditative, we don’t really talk, we just play and listen. Once, when we were recording Sequence Two, we had a funny moment while we were recording where we realized we were watching an NHL hockey game on mute in the background while we played. We were making these beautiful, hypnotic noises, while watching tv the entire time. We thought that was really funny.

Was the trilogy concept planned from day one, or did it evolve organically?

Stephen Ramsay: my recollection is that it was planned from inception, and the idea was that every album would be instrumental, except for one song – and that each member would take turns singing on each subsequent record. And that’s exactly what’s happened!

How much does science fiction or astronomy influence your visual imagery?

Jace and Olga have a great collection of 60s and 70s science and technology books in their basement at home, and we take absolutely all of the titles for our records from them. At the end of the recording process, we get a bunch out and go through them to pull out the best sounding phrases that would make great song titles. We make a master list and then choose the ones we like best to name the songs.

Is the darker tone of Sequence Three a reflection of current socio-political anxiety?

Stephen: I don’t think it was intentional. There’s never an agenda when we start an album. I’m totally unsurprised if it seeps in though, Light Conductor doesn’t compose so much as receive its songs. So if the record reflects a contemporary sense of dread and darkness, that’s probably why.

How closely do you work with Ian Ilavsky on the album artwork?

Stephen: We give Ian Ilavsky free reign to do his thing on it. Jace, Olga and I all have relative interests in design, and we know for Ian his excitement around the design really is so much about the object of the physical record itself. He gets excited by textures and print methods and ink. I think the band is pretty easy to please when it comes to this stuff, so we’d probably settle for less than Ian puts into it, but Ian loves going the extra mile to offer many iterations, his rationale from a design perspective. We love it. When we finally get the records, they are always mind-blowingly beautiful to behold.

Which non-musical influences, films, books, or art, if any, shaped this record’s atmosphere?

Stephen: archive.org, the great library of online ephemera factors into play here. For me, the movie Bugonia was on my mind during the making of the record. I read Ursula K LeGuin‘s The Dispossessed during the making of the record. And we were probably watching NHL hockey while we made it. Haha.

With everything so digital these days, what is it about vintage hardware that still draws you in? Is there a specific vintage synth that defined the sonic palette of Sequence Three?

Stephen: It’s just so fun to play them, especially if there are two or three people playing them together – you have someone twiddling knobs while the other plays, while another might be changing the sequence patterns… it’s just very tactile and expressive, especially with more than one person – you can generate sequences and motifs and just kind of find worlds inside of those alone, using hardware synths and sequencers.

We limited ourselves a bit less this time, we had an Arp Odyssey, an EMS VCS 3, a Sequential Circuits Prophet 5, an Oberheim SEM Pro, A Sequential Circuits Prophet VS, a Korg Microkorg, a Korg Monotron, a Roland CR-5000 and a Roland Juno 60 (which I think is maybe the only ubiquitous instrument on all the Light Conductor records), Arturia Keystep sequencers, some modular gear, plus Jace’s massive guitar pedalboard to run it all through. And let’s not forget Olga’s bass playing as well! The only true ‘acoustic’ instrument on our records, other than a little bit of DI guitar on the vocal tracks…

Does ending the trilogy signal a complete reset for your next phase? What sonic territories or instruments are you eager to explore next?

Stephen: yes, this is the end of Chapter One of Light Conductor, as it was ordained. We definitely have some ideas for the next phase, but I’m afraid I can’t share them with you just yet!

Photos courtesy of Light Conductor

Matteo Damiani

Matteo Damiani is an Italian photographer and author. Curator of the sites Retrofuturista.com; weirditaly.com; china-underground.com and others