Lauren Bousfield

Lauren Bousfield is a composer, sound designer, and electronic musician based in Los Angeles. She initially became known for her project Nero's Day at Disneyland, which merged breakcore, synth-punk, and circus-like melodies on densely constructed releases like 2009's From Rotting Fantasylands. Since 2012, Bousfield has been making music under her own name, incorporating more vocals and increased pop sensibilities on recordings such as 2020's Palimpsest and 2023's Salesforce, additionally composing for television, film, and video games. Initially from Oakland, California, Bousfield played in a synth-punk band called Beautiful Mutants during the late '90s and early 2000s before forming Nero's Day at Disneyland, also featuring Shon Koperweis, in 2005. Their debut album, Attention Shoppers, and the digital EP Grievances and Dead Malls both appeared that year, with an EP titled Colonists following in 2007. The project also contributed to Deathbomb Arc's The Fruit Will Rot, Vol. 3, a nine-disc set of mini CD-Rs that focused on the blurring lines between beat-driven electronic music and the noise scene. In addition, Bousfield played keyboards in the noise-punk group Strip Mall Seizures. In 2008, Nero's Day signed to Jason Forrest's Cock Rock Disco label, remixing the single "Rock Rock Rock" by his DJ Donna Summer alias and producing the mash-up album Trickle Down Economixxx. The full-length From Rotting Fantasylands arrived in 2009, and it gradually obtained an underground cult following. A few more tracks and remixes appeared, including a 2010 collaboration with Mincemeat or Tenspeed titled "Bent Chorals," but Nero's Day split in 2011 for undisclosed reasons. Lauren Bousfield publicly came out as transgender and continued producing music under her own name, starting with her 2012 EP Locked into Phantasy. The full-length Avalon Vales appeared in 2013. She released a series of six singles in January 2016, then issued Namazu Running, her soundtrack to the physics-based puzzle game Nebulous, the following July. Additionally, she worked with Hans Zimmer's Remote Control Productions as a technical assistant on the scores to Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Kung Fu Panda 3, and Inferno. After recovering from an apartment fire that left her with third-degree burns, Bousfield released the 2017 EP Fire Songs, which was additionally dedicated to the victims of the Ghost Ship fire in Oakland. "Used to Be Better," a collaboration with Girls Rituals (aka Devi McCallion), was released the same year. In 2018, Bousfield and her wife, Naomi Mitchell, formed In-House Pharmacy, and the two composed an alternate score to the 1989 cyberpunk horror classic Tetsuo: The Iron Man. The duo hosted a synth-themed talk show on Dublab called Low Pass Gays, and released the EP We Are Electronics and Piano Only in May 2020. Bousfield's solo album Palimpsest was issued by Deathbomb Arc in July of the same year. She appeared on Backxwash's I Lie Here Buried with My Rings and My Dresses in 2021, as well as clipping.'s EP Remxng 2.1 in 2022. Salesforce, continuing her long-running theme of consumer culture critique, was released by Orange Milk in 2023.
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