When I arrived at Roman's, a candlelit restaurant on a busy street in Brooklyn's Fort Greene neighbourhood, Daria Lourd, AKA Bored Lord, had love on her mind. "Oh, so romantiiic," she cooed, raising her eyebrows as we took a seat at our white-clothed table.

The setting felt appropriate for our conversation. For over two hours, we talked about her upcoming album (Name It, also about love), astrology (she's a Venus in Pisces) and her penchant for sapphic sappiness. We took the occasional detour as I happily followed the self-proclaimed music obsessive down several history rabbit holes. Our server seemed less interested, their growing attentiveness hinting that we had overstayed our welcome. So we tidied up a small plate of mackerel with endives and grapes, traded our water for espressos and scurried out, heading east in the crisp mid-October air.

At 8 PM, we walked into a ground-floor Bushwick apartment with peach and evergreen walls, where DJs from multiple corners of the world—I. JORDAN, Lauren Flax, Anna Morgan and the host, Jubilee—were pregaming before their respective sets. The running joke of the evening was that with such busy touring schedules, pregaming is the only way DJs can hang out with each other. We sat on a long, grey sectional couch while Lourd, wearing a floral white bandana, maroon tank top, grey khaki trousers and black military boots, sipped tequila on an adjacent chair. Intrigued by her upbringing in Memphis, a guest rattled off a list of artists based in the city. Lourd seemed fairly engaged until he mentioned the local dance style, Memphis jookin'. "You know Memphis jookin'?" she exclaimed, before diving deeper into the subject.

Earlier in the evening, Lourd told me she'd evaded Resident Advisor's attempts to cover her for years, partly because she was industry shy. But, in the company of fellow music lovers and friends, any signs of reticence seemed to fade away. Later, when we arrived at Paragon for her debut at the venue, an excited fan stopped her to say that they had bought tickets to see her play. She appeared charmed and reciprocated the fan's enthusiasm, asking for their name.

Once she stepped up to the elevated booth at Paragon, I got a deeper insight into Lourd's newfound stride. Swinging her shoulders from side to side, she reapplied her lip gloss before making a quick transition. Over two hours, she played a handful of tracks from the house-leaning records she's released this year—in addition to Name It, there's 3213123, which she calls the album's unofficial B-side. Barely an hour before, the chequered downstairs floor was scattered with dancers. A few tracks into her set, the same area was a human carpet. At one point, she looked down at the crowd, playfully squinting and shielding her eyes from the stage lights. The writhing sea cheered, and she beamed a toothy grin in response.

The Oakland-based DJ and producer experienced a meteoric rise post-lockdown thanks to the sample-heavy pop edits she released while clubs were closed.

Since the late '10s, Bored Lord has been waving the flag for ultra-modern club music that speaks to a particular crop of younger millennials and older Gen Z partygoers. She makes and plays music for a community that is predominantly queer and trans, who grew up on the internet and embrace irony like a lost art. Her discography throws Chicago house, broken beat, hardcore and East Coast club music into a blender and often tempers vulnerability with more than a hint of humour.

Another defining element of her work is her sharp sampling technique, a remnant of her past life producing for rappers in Memphis. She identifies as "truly, deeply a nerd"–no musical territory is off limits. When we met, she explained that she was deep into a John Coltrane phase. But on Transexual Rave Hymns' "No More Hiding Who I Want To Be" from 2019, she samples the Disney film Camp Rock, stretching and distorting Joe Jonas's voice into a trans mantra. She made an edit of Britney Spears's "Hit Me Baby One More Time," and not once, but twice, she committed the cardinal dance music sin of sampling Deee-Lite's "What Is Love?"

Even though it's one of the most notable and discussed aspects of her style, Lourd is still surprised when people point out her use of samples. "I didn't really know it was such a unique thing because I'm pretty much directly referencing early Reinforced records," she said, referring to the 4hero-helmed label that sampled everything from films and cartoons to jazz and Kate Bush in the early '90s.

Lourd's fans aren't impressed by her sampling alone but also by the emotions she conveys through them. She crafts new narratives from her source material through spliced phrases, and returning to these tracks often feels like nestling in a quilt gifted by a loved one long ago. Speaking over the phone, bastiengoat, her longtime friend and collaborator, mentioned revisiting some of her old projects because the feelings they provoke are so profound. "She has stuff that isn't online anymore that I still have tucked away in places," he said. "She wrote a really beautiful song years ago, and I used to keep it on a CD in my car. I'd listen to it all the time while driving and cry."

She makes and plays music for a community that is predominantly queer and trans, who grew up on the internet and embrace irony like a lost art.

Growing up in a broken home in Memphis, Lourd spent much of her time bouncing around different neighbourhoods. Her love for music was always consistent, however, and dominated her life. In a music scene primarily centred in the city's Midtown area, she played in rock bands, produced for rappers, dabbled in singing indie folk and threw parties with a collective she helped found called Rare Nnudes. As a self-described introvert, she thrived most in spaces oriented around music because they allowed her to freely disappear into something she was passionate about. When we talked about the early Rare Nnudes parties, she explained that one of the "cooler" aspects was getting lost in the crowd because it's "not really socialising at that point."

In 2016, Lourd travelled to Oakland to visit bastiengoat. She ended up staying. Rare Nnudes, which the pair ran together, fizzled out, but they soon formed a new collective in the city called TRASH CVLT. At the time, other local queer collectives like Club Chai and New World Dysorder were turning the tide of what was once a boys' club. Inspired and nurtured by Oakland's community, Lourd's relocation kickstarted a pivotal moment. She came out as trans and shortly after released two essential EPs filled with tongue-in-cheek club edits: 2018's Who Is She? and Transexual Rave Hymns.

Lourd's star rose moderately for a few years until the pandemic forced her to make music at a fast clip to bring money in. With no gigs and an ominous question mark hanging over the future of events, she gained a reputation as being incredibly prolific, releasing project after project onto Bandcamp–often deleting them soon after.

At the time, Lourd had moved into what she called a "little shithole" and was determined to make enough money to cover her cheap rent and groceries. "I thought, thank God, I have some money in my pocket. I'm not going to get fucking kicked out of this place," she said. People were taking notice of her output. In 2020, she released an edits mixtape that was so popular she had to take it down for fear of being hit with copyright claims. Her first gig post-lockdown was one of New York's biggest parties—Nonstop at Nowadays—where she shared a lineup with Four Tet, Shyboi and Noncompliant. "To me, that was just insane," she said. "I was like, 'why are y'all asking me?'"

On her new album, Name It, Lourd has found a new perspective, creating a tapestry of sounds more detailed and emotive than ever.

That first night back was just the beginning. Droves of people came to see her perform, and they all wanted to talk about her edits. Then, Eris Drew and Octo Octa reached out to have her release on their label, T4T LUV NRG. The EP, The Last Illusion, was a sellout. Before the pandemic, Lourd said, she was a barback at a "Downtown yuppie cocktail bar" who played gigs on the weekends. As more opportunities piled up, she was suddenly navigating the business and publicity that comes with a fully fledged music career. "It freaks me out a lot of the time," she admitted. "I have a lot of social anxiety, and it's hard for me to wrap my head around how many people are paying attention."

Lourd's relationship with Eris Drew and Octo Octa began when she opened for them at a warehouse party in Los Angeles in February, 2020. She brought the crowd to a feverish pitch, mixing each track into the next at lightning speed. The T4T LUV NRG cofounders recalled one track in particular, which they described as a "hardcore edit of a pop punk song." The couple, who have headlined some of the world's leading dance music festivals, experienced a very rare feeling for DJs playing at that level: they were actually nervous to have to follow Lourd.

"[Octo Octa] and I have this whole concept of the ecstatic that we take really seriously," Drew told me over the phone. "It's less about the idea of genre and more about the music's energy and what it produces in people. So, I was like, well, [here's] an energetic sibling." When it was time to take over they both immediately—and wordlessly—swaddled Lourd in a deep embrace.

Even with all her success, Lourd found she'd grown weary of how the media covered her music. She explained that it seemed like all anyone wanted to talk about was her edits, "but I also make a lot of original music." Around the time she released The Last Illusion, she visited Drew and Octo Octa's house to play some demos for an album she was working on. The album was Name It, which she turned in for T4T LUV NRG, hoping to expand the narrative around her music. She knew she had the skill set to be an album artist and wanted to demonstrate as much to the journalists and fans who might have been expecting more edits.

The eight-track album took more than a year to complete, proving the benefit of producing at a slower pace. The album brings together house music, Miami bass, breakbeat, hardcore and even some twirly saxophone ("In My Soul") in a pristine fashion. Lourd is still sampling, but doing so from her vinyl collection (she recalled listening to a test pressing and laughing as she heard the dust on the needle from one of her samples). The tapestry of sounds she creates through her samples is more detailed and emotive than ever.

Name It earnestly explores a verb that is a guiding force in her life: love. Lourd began working on the record while processing a difficult breakup. She spent much of the healing journey reflecting on the relationship pattern she found herself in, which involved bursts of romantic intensity followed by a wave of burnout. For the first time, she considered that perhaps she needed to address her romantic needs and intentions to thrive in her relationships. "If I was going to find love or what I was seeking in love, what did I want?" she asked herself. These questions became the heart of Name It. "If I'm going to make myself vulnerable," she said, "I'm going to really dedicate myself because I'm an intense romantic."

She began piecing together the record while she was processing a difficult breakup, and, for the first time, considered that perhaps she needed to address her own romantic needs and intentions in order to thrive in her relationships.

Lourd noted that the album has a melancholy tone. Her idea of love isn't rainbow-coloured. It's no CeCe Peniston poem, there are no roses in the bathtub. The album channels the complexities of love and the gruelling work it takes through wet-eyed pads, vocal riffs that gleam with hope and drum programming that ricochets from broken beat to jungle. "With Others" takes one of dance music's most-sampled a capellas–"The Realm"–and blankets it with laser synths and bouncy toms. On "There's More," a pensive breakdown amplifies a moony vocal, and starlit synths make the centrepiece while drums pedal in to bring the quiet moment to an explosive chorus. On opener "Luv," rapid-fire phrases sampled from various records form elaborate hooks. One of the diva vocals shouts, "What you lookin' for?"

When I caught up with Lourd a month after our first meeting, a week had passed since Name It's release. She spoke to me on video chat wearing a black shirt with "MEMPHIS" scrawled across the front. She'd been thinking about her hometown, having just visited to celebrate her mother's birthday. Together, they visited the Stax Museum, which houses memorabilia from local soul label Stax Records. She'd since been revisiting the Stax catalogue and reflecting on its numerous landmark elements, such as sliding synths and blues notes, that have deeply influenced her production. It's an influence she can't shake, just like she "cannot undo the element of the punk, DIY aspect of Memphis that I grew up with and I can't undo the influence of Memphis rap, Three 6 Mafia and dirty, hard drums," she said.

After months of touring Europe and the States, she was finally back in Oakland, speaking from the sunlit kitchen in the new home she now shares with her partner. When I asked how she felt about the record now that it was out in the world, she said the feedback, while nice, hasn't been her primary focus. I'd noticed the social media posts condemning institutions for their stance on Palestine, while her record, for the most part, was quietly promoted. "Speaking on Palestinian genocide at the same time as promoting an album, how do you handle that without being tone deaf?" she said. "I'm doing the motions. I'm doing the interviews and the posts, but I have other things to think about, like what's happening in Palestine, trying to attend things, then moving and being present with my partner in a new home. Oddly enough, it's somehow not the most important thing going on in my life."

Perhaps the new life perspective Lourd gained while writing is most important about Name It. Throughout her life, she'd watch her mother attach a note to a front door as a daily reminder or manifestation device to accomplish certain goals. Her mother used the same practice when she and her partner were looking for a new apartment. The couple got lucky and found and secured their new home before it appeared on any listing sites. While Lourd struggled to name her last album, this time she adopted her mother's technique. She scribbled "name it" on a Post-it and stuck it to her bedroom door. "It was burned into my brain every single day when I left my room," she said. "Just name it, name it!. Then, it became less about the album and more about walking through life—if I want to accomplish something, I have to name it. Otherwise, I'm just mindlessly wandering through the world."