LUKA
Toronto’s own LUKA; photographed by Josh MacDonald.
Occasionally every so often a troubadour comes around with a song in their heart that changes your life upon first listen. Perhaps it was some opening act that gripped you by the heartstrings as you patiently awaited the act you had waited months, weeks, and years in advance to witness performing in the flesh. And maybe it was that artist who caught you off guard with some clever chord arrangement, a lyrical couplet, a bridge, a bar, a beat, a stanza, a verse, a chorus, a refrain, or sustain that then sent you weeping into the contents of the 12 ounce beverage that you paid $10 to the barkeep for, not including the obligatory gratuity. But no matter what, who, where or when; these artists whose personas and work enter our lives at the precise correct time can make the biggest impact imaginable in our respective worlds.
Which brings us to Toronto’s latest rising tune-smith LUKA, who premieres the live video for “Pauses of the Night” featured off the album Summon Up a Monkey King available now from Yellow K Records. Directed & edited by Colin Medley with additional camera work by Katrina Singletton; LUKA’s own unique intimate style is captured on stage at Toronto’s The Smiling Buddha where the minimalist b/w style allows the viewer & listener to feel at home, up close & personal with the artist & band. And it is from here that we are introduced to the songs & sounds of LUKA, where the wild nature of the heart that yearns for what the hearts for is spelled out in the most sublime & cryptic of passages. The own consciousness of amour is personified as a force of nature that exists outside of our own reins of control, where mentions of memories allude to those blank spaces & voids of space & time that abide by a certain sort of logic, and supernatural set of metaphysics that encase our most mythologized memorized of moments that replayed in the mind’s theater like a favorite film scene watched ad nauseum to conjure up feelings that supersede descriptions, definitions, & pithy adjectives.
The live footage from Colin Medley & Katrina Singleton places the listening/viewing audience in a very cozy crowd at Toronto’s Smiling Buddha on the date of this past April 28. Joined by a band of guitars, subdued percussion & accompanying voices; LUKA takes time in developing the narrative that explores the feelings that two individuals possess for one another over epoch blocks & eras. What draws us into LUKA’s songs is the way that memories both good, bad, & everything else in between is recalled with painstaking honesty in every breathy utterance and strummed note. Feelings that remain & the feelings from yesterday are mixed together in a lonesome, pensive cocktail of solace where reality & romantic realness collide in the most unlikely of ways. “Even though I am the part of you that you would like to lose, you are forgetting that love is a profession you can never choose.” LUKA depicts the sobering departure of a significant other while holding on to some sort of human, and heart-held hope that wishes to retain the foundations & castles that the two have built. Vulnerability abounds in LUKA’s slow tempo & low tempered tones that seeks the embrace of a former love in lines like, “cradle me in your embrace and hold me like the baby that I am.” Memories in this song & live rendering are rewound like watching old VHS movies of friends that moved away, family members that have since passed away, or the feeling that sifting through ancient epistolary correspondences yields. “Even though I am the mountain you would wish to crumble, your heartbeat ran away like a train escaping underground,” LUKA passionately sings with an emotive restraint, where the residual feelings of the one that got away are imagined along with intimations of complicated and a difficult yesteryear. “You will start to smile when the years come flying back, your lucky there’s no video to smudge the hazy vision of the past…” And for all these intricacies and jumbled connotations, the static-squelching connections spit out these sparks of infinite possibility & beauty left behind that LUKA illustrates beautifully & cryptically in the mysterious & allusory language like, “For even just a memory will make you open up the world that we created in the pauses of the night…” Join us now for an intimate conversation with LUKA.
Describe your earliest adventures into music.
A beatbox band with my brothers and a family friend, “The Rotten Cherries”. Altering the lyrics to Take That’s “(Want You) Back for Good” to “Wash Your Back For Good”.
First favorite musical heroes?
They Might Be Giants. Flood, Lincoln and Apollo 18 were big records among my brothers and I.
Current favorite musical heroes?
Joni Mitchell. Alice Coltrane. Jonathan Richman. David Campbell. Arthur Russell.
All wise, sincere innovators of language and sound.
Tell us what you’ve been recording lately for Yellow K.
“Summon Up A Monkey King” is the latest LUKA record Yellow K is putting out. It’s the most open and direct music I’ve written. I feel my songwriting voice has altered since writing these songs, but I’m glad the record captures a moment of unguarded sincerity.
Give us insights into your own personal creative approaches to song writing & the process of recording.
For me, songwriting is very intuitive, quick and solitary. Any laboured attempt to write something seems to be a dead end.
The process of recording for “Monkey King” was much more collaborative. Most tracks began with live vocals, guitar and drums and then Stephen Prickett (Producer, Engineer) would take over. The record owes much of its mood and sound through the musical conversation of quick live recordings by myself and Evan Cartwright (drummer) and the more laboured, intricate soundscapes of Prickett.
A view into LUKA’s room; photo courtesy of the artist.
What’s good in Toronto right now?
To name a few…
The Highest Order. Eucalyptus. Bernice. Jennifer Castle. Marine Dreams. Marker Starling. Ada Dahli. Julie Arsenault. Thom Gill. Omhouse. Doug Tielli. Ryan Driver. The Weather Station. Anamai.
The city has riches of great songwriters.
What are you the most excited about for your stateside tour?
Diner Breakfast. Diner Coffee. Chocolate Donut.
LUKA’s album Summon Up a Monkey King is available now from Yellow K Records.
