Lou Hayter: "A very small percentage of women are producers so this record is a statement"

Lou Hayter has been the coolest woman in London for years now, but she is about to hit Major Tom-in-deep-space levels of frostbite with her new album, Unfamiliar Skin. She’s always been cool but the difference now is that she is in total control. “I decided to produce it myself, which was a challenge, but it was time,” Hayter says, “It is a male dominated music industry .

I’ve worked with a lot of wonderful men who respected me, but also experienced the flip side of that, both in my DJ career and my production career, of being mansplained at, of not having an opinion that was valid. A very small percentage of women are producers, so this felt like a statement. It’s very undiluted me.

And sonically I moved elsewhere as well. It’s a slightly more sinister sound to my first record” After the sunshiney Eighties feel of her debut solo album Private Sunshine, this latest one is darker and more ambitious with its retro-future sci-fi art-pop. David Bowie would surely approve of its eclecticism, the way it balances personal intimacy and otherworldliness, and an uncanny ability to, well, get under your skin.

“The title Unfamiliar Skin came from a conversation with a friend where we were talking about affairs and how the pull of unfamiliar skin is so compelling to somebody in a long relationship,” she says, “But it has a duel meaning because I’m in an unfamiliar skin as a producer.” Lou first came to attention as keyboardist in the Mercury-nominated New Young P.