Growing up in the small town of Grand Point, LA, Louque was exposed to many types of music, but considered himself to be an athlete. At college, he studied piano and picked up guitar, but focused on acting, which led him to New York in 1997. There, he enrolled in acting school, and worked thespian gigs for a year. “(Acting) helped me out creatively,” Louque said in a recent phone interview, “but it got to a point where I was always doing music on the side, and I knew I could do it if I just worked hard at it. So I quit school so I could have more time to focus.”

Louque then taught himself how to manipulate home recording equipment and went about writing songs and developing his personal musical style.

So Close is the result of those many hours spent in a Louque’s Brooklyn apartment along with his two primary collaborators, Seth Gold and Donovan Guidry.

Freely bouncing between genres, but always staying intimate and mellow, So Close is a creative and highly addictive album. The tracks are sparse and bass-heavy with electronic beats, subtle guitar accompaniment, and frequent piano loops. “Still in Waiting” leans more toward reggae, while the poppy “Kenny the Jet” sounds a bit like G. Love.

The primary sound is of a singer-songwriter hanging out in the French Quarter or chillin’ with Brooklyn kids on the front stoop. Another description is Jack Johnson by way of Lee Perry. “It depends on how you look at it,” Louque offered. “Some people will think it’s singer-songwriter, some people will think it’s rock. Everybody has their own name for it.”

After the release of So Close and a slew of live performances, Louque is anxious to get back into the studio, where he’ll lay down some new, even more adventurous tracks. He plans on playing guitar more on the project, since he won’t be bound to the quiet apartment setting. “My new stuff has even more of a blend of Jamaican dub, New Orleans street beat, dancehall stuff, with songwriter type of stuff in there too,” he explained.

Those styles remain an inspiration for Louque, but he also enjoys the more rock-oriented, yet experimental, sounds of My Bloody Valentine and Radiohead. For the most part though, the singer will listen to anything he can get his hands on.

Louque’s varied sound ensures that audiences of many musical styles will lend an ear to So Close.

“It’s still wide open,” he said. “One day I want to make an American roots record, you know, maybe a few records down the line. I don’t feel like I’m pinned down to one style. I feel like I can blend them and see what happens, without getting too carried away.”