What happens when an underground electronic artist decides to break over a decade-long hiatus and return to the music world in the midst of a global pandemic? This is exactly what Luke Blair aka Lukid did.
Isolated in Lisbon, Lukid took to his music like a mad scientist, employing unconventional methods like the use of tapes to get that elusive unidentifiable sound. We unpick his creative process, discuss his views on the use of filters in films, and touch upon the traps of becoming too attached to a particular sound. Lukid's innovative approach to music production is intriguing, and his philosophy hinged on the uniqueness of sound sets an interesting precedent.
As we traverse the myriad facets of Lukid's musical journey, we also dive into the broader changes that the music and film industry have undergone in the digital age. We shed light on how streaming has revolutionized the way we consume music, the role of algorithms in music discovery, and the rising challenge of securing film scoring opportunities. From Lukid's early influences, his initiation to music production through Cubase.Tune in, get lost in sound, and unearth the story of a musical prodigy navigating the changing times and his own personal evolution.
Presented and produced by Paul Hanford
Paul Hanford on Instagram
Lukid’s new album Tilt is out now on Glum, check it out here
Lost and Sound is sponsored by Audio-Technica
Paul’s debut book, Coming To Berlin: Global Journeys Into An Electronic Music And Club Culture Capital is out now on Velocity Press. Click here to find out more.
Subscribe to the Lost and Sound Substack for fresh updates and writing.
Lost and Sound title music by Thomas Giddins
What happens when an underground electronic artist decides to break over a decade-long hiatus and return to the music world in the midst of a global pandemic? This is exactly what Luke Blair aka Lukid did.
Isolated in Lisbon, Lukid took to his music like a mad scientist, employing unconventional methods like the use of tapes to get that elusive unidentifiable sound. We unpick his creative process, discuss his views on the use of filters in films, and touch upon the traps of becoming too attached to a particular sound. Lukid's innovative approach to music production is intriguing, and his philosophy hinged on the uniqueness of sound sets an interesting precedent.
As we traverse the myriad facets of Lukid's musical journey, we also dive into the broader changes that the music and film industry have undergone in the digital age. We shed light on how streaming has revolutionized the way we consume music, the role of algorithms in music discovery, and the rising challenge of securing film scoring opportunities. From Lukid's early influences, his initiation to music production through Cubase.Tune in, get lost in sound, and unearth the story of a musical prodigy navigating the changing times and his own personal evolution.
Presented and produced by Paul Hanford
Paul Hanford on Instagram
Lukid’s new album Tilt is out now on Glum, check it out here
Lost and Sound is sponsored by Audio-Technica
Paul’s debut book, Coming To Berlin: Global Journeys Into An Electronic Music And Club Culture Capital is out now on Velocity Press. Click here to find out more.
Subscribe to the Lost and Sound Substack for fresh updates and writing.
Lost and Sound title music by Thomas Giddins
Lost in Sound is sponsored by Audio Technica. Audio Technica are a global but still family run company that make headphones, turntables, cartridges, microphones. They make studio quality yet affordable products because they believe that high quality audio should be accessible to all. So, wherever you are in the world, head on over to AudioTechnicacom to check out all of their range of stuff. Hello, hello and welcome to Lost in Sound.
Speaker 1:I'm Paul Hanford, I'm your host, I'm an author, a broadcaster and a lecturer based in Berlin, where I'm speaking to you now from, and this is the show where, each episode, I have conversations with the musical innovators, the outsiders, the mavericks, the artists that do their own unique thing, and we talk about music, creativity, life, the stuff that inspires us to make the things that we make. Previous guests have included peaches, suzanne Cianni, gio Mo Roc, chilly Gonzalez, cosy, funny 2T, jean-michel Ja, mickey Blanco and First and More. And today on the show I have a conversation with underground electronic producer Lucid. My book Coming to Berlin is available in all good bookshops or via the publisher's website, velocity Press, and I'd just like to say a massive thank you to anyone that's read it so far and for the messages I get about that. It does mean a lot, yeah, so how are you doing? I'm coming at you from a very grizzly, grizzly, grizzly, gray Berlin, in the district of Neukölln, and today you're going to hear a chat I had yesterday, which was December the 12th, with producer Luc Blair. He's just released his first album under the name of Lucid for 11 years. It's called Tilt, and I think it's fucking great. He first started releasing music in the mid-90s under the name of Lucid, with a series of albums that have been described as like a younger, more gnarly club school relative of Steve Reich and Flip Glass's Minimalism, and the last of these albums was way back in 2012. A lot's happened since then. He's been busy with other things, but now he's back with a new Lucid album. It's called Tilt. As I mentioned, that's no relation, as far as I know, to the Scott Walker album of the same name.
Speaker 1:I love this record. It's an electronic record that is pitched somewhere way far from the dance floor, but with still a kind of rhythmic connection to that. It's full of grain and atmosphere and I'm a sucker for graininess in music anyway where sounds are distorted, pitch, bent, processed, processed and processed again echoed. It's something that I feel that this album always work occupies a similar space in terms of listening to Bords of Canada or William Bazinski, and often in that music which plays with the notion of sort of degrading sounds, kind of echoing out sounds, is discussed in terms of like memory and what that means. And I don't know whether that's because the music can kind of sound faded in itself, but I would say Lucid's stuff is, it's got like a real rhythmic heart to it as well.
Speaker 1:He's also released music on Actress' label Verk, in partnership with Ninja Tune, on warp sublabel Arcola and on mute sublabel Liberation Technologies, as well as his own glum imprint, and glum is the label that he's released Tilt on. He's also one half of Reset who've released music on the Trility tapes, trilogy tapes, I should say. So, yes, we have this conversation. I hope you enjoy it. And yeah, this is what happened when I met Lucid. Well, thanks for chatting with me today. I've been listening to Tilt for a few months and it's the first Lucid release in over a decade, I think, album-wise. And you know, obviously you've been very busy with lots of other stuff, but what made this the right time to come back with a Lucid album?
Speaker 2:I think I mean, it wasn't a plan to wait 11 years or whatever it is. I've kind of been meaning to release an album and I'd had tracks that I'd made that I really wanted to get out, but I just I don't know. I would feel like I had an album ready. Then I'd listen back to it and think I don't know if it quite does, does it justice. I don't know. I was being a bit of a perfectionist really. And then COVID happened and I kind of thought, well, got all this time, I might as well try and get something out. There's also, I feel, like COVID was a little bit of a wake-up call in terms of I mean, maybe in hindsight it seems a bit silly, but at the time, you know, it was a pretty dramatic thing and it was like, oh you know, who knows what's going to happen in life. There's no good having this music just sitting there on my hard drive If no one can hear it. I mean not that the world needs to hear it but you know.
Speaker 2:I kind of didn't feel like that. You know, the music of mine that's on, that is out there on Spotify and stuff is pretty old. Before this I kind of felt it didn't really represent me. So, you know, I started thinking, you know, if I I'd meet someone at a party or something and they would say, what do you do? And I would explain, I made music, and they'd be like, oh, what's what names you use? So I'd tell them and then I think, oh, they're going to go home now and put that into Spotify, youtube, whatever plays first. That's where they're going to judge me on.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. I mean, do you feel like also so did you record the bulk of it, like sort of from COVID onwards?
Speaker 2:Maybe like half and half. The first track on the album is that's from like eight years ago. That was one. I've always liked that track and everyone I've sent that to you know, people I kind of trust they've always been like oh yeah, that's that's. You should put that out. So I kind of wanted to release that for a long time. And then from that I started putting stuff together during COVID and it was maybe little ideas that I'd made over the years and then some new stuff, so a mixture, I would say.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and did like that kind of sort of. If you're still saying, like COVID was like this kind of point as well, you know, because the music you do is, look, it is really really atmospheric. And did you, was there sort of a connection sort of, between this kind of weird time and space and kind of maybe like the space that you're living in and the way we're all grounded in terms of, like, how the sounds came about and your processes on it?
Speaker 2:I'm always inclined to maybe say that I'm not that affected by my surroundings in that way, but I mean it must, it must have an effect. I'm always in a little bit of a bubble, I guess. In my studio I'm working alone. So I mean it'd be hard for me to say like concretely that I was affected by the pandemic in terms of the sounds that I made, but it was maybe in terms of my outlook and my work ethic focused me a bit. I was also in, I was living in Lisbon at the time. I was in Portugal and the way you know, I separated from my family, so it was, there was that extra kind of element of isolation which was quite a weird thing, but then it was. You know it was I guess you can say this but it was quite a nice place to be for the pandemic.
Speaker 1:Like yeah, I could imagine. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Nice weather. You know, lisbon is a beautiful city and it was kind of quite empty, unusually. So it was kind of amazing to walk around it and it was, yeah, it was inspiring, but it's hard to say how exactly.
Speaker 1:Personally, yeah, and so you, what were you doing in Lisbon? Were you moved out there at a time, or was it one of those things where we all kind of got stuck?
Speaker 2:somewhere I was. I was living there. I'd been out there about a year and a half. I met my girlfriend there, so I moved over, and also Jackson, who's the other half of Rezit, who's another project of mine. He was living out there, so it all kind of came together. So I was there for a couple of years and then COVID happened, so I was there for another year or two after that. Yeah, and you're back in the UK now. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I think there's a thing one of the things I get most about listening to it is that and I guess with a lot of your other stuff as well is it's like a lot of the sounds aren't that easy to place and is that kind of an important thing for you, you know, to kind of make sounds kind of a little bit unidentifiable to their source.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I always kind of plan to do to make an album or to make music where that isn't the idea, where it's taking things back to basics. But then I can never quite resist like keep like just processing things to the point where they become a little bit unrecognizable. I don't know. Often I'll like make a track and I'll have it there, but I'll listen back to it and just think that it's a bit too normal and then I'll like kind of use that track, sample it again and make another track out of that and, just like you know, just keeping on the layers going until it sounds individual enough. I guess is what the aim is.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't know. Well, I mean, it sounds it to me, but like, do you sort of know instinctively when an offer's, an offer's on a track? You know, like, if you're kind of processing sounds, is there like a sweet spot? And if there is, is there like a sort of way you can kind of like describe the feeling that you get when you get that sweet spot?
Speaker 2:I find that the only way to know if I have that sweet spot is to make something, leave it for a while and come back to it. So I try to make quite a lot of sketches and ideas, just have them there in the folder and then I'll come back to them refresh years and yeah, usually you know I'll put something on and be immediately like okay, yeah, this is something. I wouldn't be able to say, what that feeling is, but it's just like okay, yeah, this I feel like I could listen to this for a while. That kind of thing Like this is a, this is a this could be a track.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it starts to kind of get a bit of a life of its own. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2:The individual elements kind of come together to make something, rather than it sounding I don't I think you're right Like I don't. Sometimes I don't with my own stuff. I kind of don't like to be able to hear how it was made, necessarily, which is strange, because with other music I actually quite like that. But yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I think when I made music it was kind of the same. Actually, I mean, I kind of related it to being a bit like in films where you kind of have like the filters on and you know, like the grading sort of gives it a sort of I can't stand watching films on that kind of high definition TV where you know you know motion.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's disgusting. Yeah, motion smoothing is the worst. Yeah, it is. It is. It just makes like something just look really like like an episode of the bill from the 80s or something. Yeah, like El Dorado.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, turn it off for my parents every time I go around. I don't know how they turned itself into a condom.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think they secretly like it. My dad does that as well, yeah, and I mean, and again, like a lot of these sort of techniques that you use, all at that, I kind of get across this like there's a lot of like sound degradation, some kind of like pitch bending, and things feel very kind of like earthy and grainy. And you know, previously, like I've read interviews where you said you used a lot of tape to get this, you used a lot of tape on this album.
Speaker 2:A little bit, not not loads. I had a tape player out in Lisbon and it broke down maybe like a year into my stay there, so maybe a few tracks had it on it and other stuff. Like I said, it's just kind of working with stuff until it gets a certain sound, Not always with tape, but yeah, and it's weird because often I will even if I make an effort to make something sound a bit different to normal, it ends up sounding like me, I guess, which can be a bit annoying, but I guess it's a good thing. I don't know, See a little bit of tape on this, but not loads. I sometimes feel like that can be a little bit of a shortcut you can get. You can get kind of addicted to that that sound and feel like nothing's completed until I've added that layer. So I tried to move away from that a bit actually. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean, I guess that's the kind of thing about kind of like being a producer and an artist is like each project. It's like you have your things but you also sort of like look to sort of see how you can maneuver them in different directions, I guess.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it is. I've never I've never quite worked like that in terms of having a new kind of setup for each project, which I think maybe I possibly should do going forward. I'm a little bit stuck in my ways, like I've always kind of just worked in my computer hard with software not much of a hardware man.
Speaker 1:I guess that makes it quite remote as well, like it kind of gives you the opportunity to like, if you're in Lisbon, kind of start recording there and not think about lugging.
Speaker 2:It does, although when I moved to Lisbon, I lugged over my massive old PC because I was so stuck in my ways that I was using an old version of Cubase and felt like I couldn't really use anything else. Sorry, it was insane that I did that. Anyway, I have learned to use Ableton properly in the last couple of years. So, yeah, now I am fully remote. Yeah, oh, bless Cubase.
Speaker 1:I think it's sort of disappearing away a bit from people's consciousness.
Speaker 2:I know I stuck with it, I gave it my best, but yeah, it was time, yeah.
Speaker 1:And I mean I don't know if this is just something I kind of draw on myself when I listen, and so I apologize it is. But I feel like quite often like there's this kind of connection between sort of like kind of tape degradation or degrading sounds and like memory and I know that I was reading the other day that music responds to the same part of our brains that memory does as well and nostalgia, and is that something like you kind of draw on yourself or is that just like you know? That's for whatever the listener kind of like picks out on.
Speaker 2:I mean, I think I do, and I have heard that word nostalgia used when people are talking about my music and it's again, it's maybe something I tried to avoid, because I do think it can be a little bit easy to know, there are these kind of signifiers that may that can be overused in music where it is giving it that nostalgic sound, which is not something I particularly want to do.
Speaker 2:But I mean triggering that kind of emotion. Yeah, definitely that. Triggering that kind of response is I think, yeah, that's something I am for. That kind of other it's hard to put your finger on, isn't it that feeling? But it's. Maybe it sounds a bit like something you kind of already know, but is not?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think we I don't know, I mean, I mean I'm sure you know we'll think of like music that we've heard, like maybe sort of a formative point in our life that we feel that we've heard somewhere else and we haven't.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. I mean like you were asking before about how I know and have found an idea that can go somewhere. I think it is when it sounds like it could be something like that already existed, kind of in a way. You know what I mean, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Definitely it's a sort of trigger in a good way. Yeah, I mean, and like as Luke it as well, you know, obviously you know, you know you collaborate with people. There's scores as well, but like as Luke, it like the kind of started around the mid-naughties, right, and I mean, looking back now, what do you think has changed the most for you since then in terms of of, like, your kind of creativity and the way you work?
Speaker 2:I feel like I have a bit more of a vision of what I want to achieve these days. You know, I was quite young when I started, when I started releasing music and feel a bit like I kind of stumbled into it without necessarily knowing what I wanted to achieve. I was just, you know, I loved making love, making music, and I did it for the fun of it. And now it's kind of I don't know. I had that big gap, like you're saying, of over a decade. I kind of started thinking do I need, you know, do I need to release this music? Does it have a purpose? So I don't know. Yeah, I feel like I have more clarity these days and what I want to achieve. My process is not that dissimilar, to be honest, or just me kind of plugging away on a computer, I guess. So not that much has changed.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, what about the industry in itself? Because you know, when you started releasing, you know it was that sort I guess it was that sort of still that sort of era of like digital was still, I mean, was still relatively a new thing and a lot of like smaller labels were kind of adapting to it and or maybe not adapting to it. And now it seems like, you know, we've gone from digital to like more streaming and then like sort of the more hyper capitalist sort of end of sort of tech company streaming as well, you know, and I'm sort of wondering how that sort of plays out for you or what you reckon about that.
Speaker 2:I mean, I don't know, I have mixed feelings. When I started releasing music, it did. It felt like stuff got more attention because I guess there was less released. Like in hindsight I was pretty lucky to have a reasonable amount of reviews and press about the music I was releasing back then. These days it doesn't really quite exist. But at the same time I didn't really see it as a viable way to make money back then releasing music, because, well, you would release a record and then that was kind of it. There wasn't streaming, there was digital sales, but no one really bought much of that. So these days I guess it's kind of nice that you can have a catalogue out there that's generating revenue. It feels a bit more like if I release music these days. It feels a bit more like I'm adding to my kind of catalogue that people can listen to whenever they want Because of streaming and stuff like that you can kind of look and see all your albums lined up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but I guess the flip side of that is there's so much music these days being released that is kind of hard to know if anyone's listening or feels like a bit of a flooded market. I don't know if I have particularly strong feelings about that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, I know that it's like I mean I have to kind of watch my kind of like grumpy old man things that just sort of kick in at age. In some ways. I do miss the element of discovery.
Speaker 2:Is that something that you miss as well, or yeah, yeah, I do miss that, like I don't really go to record shops that much these days, which is on me, it's not society's fault, but yeah, I used to find a lot just by stumbling on them in record shops, and these days you're kind of at the mercy of the algorithm, which can also be quite good. But then also I've always I mean I've always used the internet to discover stuff, so that hasn't changed too much. There are less blogs these days. Blogs used to be much better.
Speaker 2:Definitely yeah yeah, and I still use YouTube a lot. I don't know, once again, I don't know, if my process has changed that much in terms of finding music, in that I still, apart from the shop, apart from going to shops, I do still kind of just troll YouTube and the corners of the internet to try and find stuff. So I still do that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean it is there. It's just you have to, kind of there's the algorithm kind of comes in and sort of you have to go. I guess it's the same with, like you know, music production as well. Like you know you have to. It's that kind of thing of going, you can turn off the grid and stuff if you want to.
Speaker 1:You know it's there and it's helpful, but it doesn't have to be there. You gotta think a bit deeper. Yeah, I mean. And also like I mean, how did you get into the film scoring as?
Speaker 2:well, I do scoring in general. Maybe it's a I don't want to say that I've only done some short films and one longer documentary. So I don't know if I should characterize myself as a film scorer. But scoring in general I don't know. It's just it's been a slow process of kind of building up relationships with different directors and people who work in different fields and and being willing to kind of do work on these things over the years. And I'm, you know, I'm getting more and more work.
Speaker 2:I guess it's a weird field because it is quite it's not really a direct route into it. If you want to be, if you want to do film scoring, then yeah, you can study that, which I didn't. So I've just yeah, I don't know, there's a few people who I've kind of worked with over the years on different projects, on little documentaries, on more advertising stuff. Yeah, I think just building up those relationships is kind of how I've had to do it Over the years. I've tried to work out if there's a better way of doing it, if there are like agencies or who can help out with this stuff. But it's just, everyone I've talked to has kind of said you just kind of have to just be willing to work hard when the opportunity does come up and then try and get more work that way.
Speaker 1:I mean, that's as far as I've heard as well. Yeah, and what would you? What would you say like the main differences as well between kind of taking on a project where you're scoring something visual, to kind of working on your own material or collaborating with someone just for music.
Speaker 2:I mean, it depends on the project a lot. Some of the advertising stuff I've done. You just have to be willing to do what they want, which will sound nothing like anything I produced under Lucid, or is it? So you kind of have to be willing to take the cues and work to a brief and get a lot of feedback and not take it personally and all those things can be quite refreshing after working on your own for a few months.
Speaker 2:It's quite nice to have some direction With the more kind of experimental stuff I've done. It's I guess having the video there as a starting point is the big difference you have of visual cue to work from which I really like doing that, and so, yeah, I guess yeah, that's the difference is you have these outside. What's the word inputs?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:You're not just sitting there scratching your head wondering where to start, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I imagine that could be quite good. So I mean, it must be like to fit in a way like more of like a you know, being able to kind of have like a map out and exercise really, rather than kind of just going off into sort of like uncharted territory.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's great. I love the challenge of it. You know it's fun and when balanced with doing my own stuff, I think it works well. I think If I was doing just one of the two all the time I might start going a bit mad, but I think the balance is good for me. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I think there's the times when I've just been left or had the opportunity or the privilege to kind of get on with my own projects. It always feels like it's going to be an amazing thing to do and I always do really enjoy it. But is I forget about the fact that I suddenly suddenly stopped bouncing off other people and how much like input can kind of really just move things along and Absolutely Amazing how much a deadline can spark you into action.
Speaker 2:You know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:And you're right, it does seem so appealing. If I am deep in some work like that, I start fantasizing about having all this time on my own where I can just do my own projects, like you're saying. That comes around and then just sitting in a room staring at a wall.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this isn't what I was imagining it. Yeah, I mean, how did music kind of come into your life in the first place? Did you have like a musical family?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I guess like the normal amount of music in the family. I got two older brothers so I guess there was always that influence. Like they're quite a fair bit older, like five and eight years older, so I had that head start. I think that's always a bit of a head start when they're bringing good music into the house. When I was you know eight or whatever, so I can remember like a lot of like I don't know public enemy and they last saw like lots of early 90s hip hop. That's my earliest kind of memories of music in the house and also, you know, like just the Beatles and stuff like that on the family cassette player. And my eldest brother was really into the guitar. Like he was a really good guitar player and he was really into Hendrix. So I started playing the guitar when I went secondary school, started doing lessons, so I guess maybe that was the first step into actually, you know, taking my interest to a slightly different level.
Speaker 1:And did she go through like a being in bands phase with the guitar?
Speaker 2:No, no, I never did that, which is possibly why I got into the computer music thing, cause I, like you know, I love playing the guitar. I loved kind of working out to play these songs that I loved. But no, I never got into a band. So I guess I was looking for some kind of outlet for this thing that I love doing. And the they had yeah, they had the Cubase, actually, I think that on the school computer in the music room.
Speaker 1:So what kind of era was this?
Speaker 2:I guess mid 90s I was at secondary school from like 95 to 2000. So yeah, yeah, yeah and I took to that really immediately.
Speaker 1:And were there any artists that you know at the time or, like producers, that you were kind of drawing on in terms of hearing and then going and working on Cubase?
Speaker 2:I was trying to think of this earlier. It was more like I was just really into the, the fun of making music. I mean, obviously I love music at a time, but it was more like it must have been when I first started doing that. I was more into like I don't know, like Radiohead and guitar music and hip hop, maybe Wu Tang and stuff. But it wasn't like I wasn't. I wasn't at home listening to whatever like drum and bass and thing I'd, oh, I need to go in and make some of this. It was more just the fun of making it. And the tracks I would make were I wouldn't even know how to describe them, but I would kind of just build up these kind of epic, probably sound awful like general MIDI tracks of just these different elements and I just loved the.
Speaker 2:I loved the way you could build up a whole song, just all these, out of these elements that you made yourself and, like you know, I would go into this lesson with nothing and come out of it with this track that I could sing in my head.
Speaker 1:I mean I love that as well, Cause I think I started in guitar bands, but then when I kind of started playing with electronic sounds just again what you were saying I really reflected on myself and that I love that feeling of, yeah, just start enough with nothing. And then, regardless of whether it was good or not and, to be honest, when I started it probably wasn't very good at all but just being able to build up like a whole world of sounds just out of nothing, yeah, I found that kind of addictive.
Speaker 2:And you know, through that then I think I started getting into electronic music, kind of from doing it myself, I guess, and my oldest brother, he you know, I think he noticed I was into it, so he started kind of giving me stuff and so then I started listening to kind of effects and that kind of thing Got really into the first boards of kind of the album obviously, and then, yeah, I don't know, my taste develops definitely as I grew into my teens, but at the start it was just messing around really.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and what kind of led up to On and On came out in 2007? And I apologize if I'm wrong about this, but was that the first Lukeid release, or had you done like a few singles before then? That was the first. And what kind of led up to that? Like, where were you living at the time? What was the sort of?
Speaker 2:vibe, I was living in London. I had studied music production in Leeds for two years although I didn't actually complete the course, I don't think and I was back in London. I was working. That's just like a runner for this media company Wrapping the coffees in Soho. Yeah, exactly, in Hogston actually even worse.
Speaker 2:Yeah and yeah, and I had been making stuff all this time and actually there was a few people I would send stuff to. One was my oldest brother, sam. Another one was a friend of his who became a friend of mine, called Davin, who actually got me that job as a runner and I would give him mini discs and he was always very encouraging of my music and then he eventually was like oh, you should send this label called Work Discs, which I didn't know about. And then I looked them up and I really loved the music they released, so I sent a CD to them and I got an email back and yeah, and then that became what was on that CD. But yeah, anyway, the album was not, I guess not too long after that.
Speaker 1:And were you kind of like what was the relationship of electronic? Were you sort of clubbing a bit at the time?
Speaker 2:A little bit. I was a bit I don't know. I regret this a bit, because it was a great time to be in London. I wasn't. I was more inclined to kind of stay at home and listen to stuff on my own. I mean I was going to plastic people a bit. Yeah, like my brother. He kind of took me under his wing a little bit, took me out to places In Leeds. I'd been going out a bit. I used to go to Subdub I don't know if you know that night a lot.
Speaker 1:I don't know that. I definitely remember Plastic People sadly missed, but I don't know that. Yeah, so Plastic.
Speaker 2:People I used to go to. The Theo Parrish used to play there every month on a Sunday, so I'd go to that and there was a night called CDR where you could take along your own music and they would play it. But no, I wasn't going out that much, to be honest, it was more. Once again, it was like I was enjoying making it and was really kind of stuck into that and I was listening to a lot of music at home, but it was never really through any particular scenes that I go into it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's interesting actually, because some artists really do connect their work with a scene and a lot of artists don't as well, and you obviously seem like an artist that sort of feels very independent from being pigeonholed or being put into a scene or feeling like come from the drum and bass scene, for example.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean I don't think either of those ways are any better. I mean, I do actually kind of regret in some ways not being more connected to a scene or not making music that was particularly of a genre, but I guess the way it worked for me and my personality was that it was more just I don't know doing my own thing.
Speaker 1:And I guess that's the kind of good thing about kind of creativity anyway, isn't? It Is like you find the way that suits you rather than you know there being one route or anything.
Speaker 2:Definitely. But I think working within a genre can, isn't that is, I don't know. Sometimes it's good to have outside influences and have people kind of pushing you on, and sometimes it can feel a bit like just working in the dark. Otherwise, and in the last few years I've started doing making kind of jungle stuff, which has been quite liberating, I would say, because it is quite fun working within the rules of a genre. You know limitations. Sometimes limitations can be very helpful.
Speaker 1:Goes back into what we were saying earlier on about like working in film and working kind of on your own stuff as well, having the limitations and the direction yeah, there are these rules that you kind of had stick by, and it is.
Speaker 2:It's like, oh wow, I can kind of just follow these rules and have a track. It's great.
Speaker 1:And I think that can be quite because when I was making music as well, I definitely didn't did my own thing or work with people doing our own thing. And then I kind of later, kind of in other mediums kind of work more to rules, and yeah, it's suddenly like, it's like, oh, wow, you know, if I put that there and that there, I can fill it out in my own creative way. But it's like wow, I didn't realize that there was a way to do stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I didn't realize. I didn't have to torture myself, didn't have to reinvent the wheel. Who long.
Speaker 1:And do you feel like, if you do another Luchid album as well, that there's like a sort of a level that you have to sort of set yourself to? Like you know, you're so much about torturing yourself. Do you feel like it's something that, in order to do it, you have to feel ready in a certain way? Or?
Speaker 2:I mean I think that was the case with this last album, but I feel like maybe I'm going to have to try and be a bit easier on myself going forward. I'm kind of more up for just releasing stuff now, I think. I mean I say that who knows what happened, but yeah, I think it's, I don't need to be so precious about it. I think going forward that's really nice and I think it's nice for people to get these little snapshots of your output. You know, you're like I was saying about kind of adding to my body of work. I think that's kind of maybe the way I'm going to look at it a bit, or I can just add to it every now and again you know, yeah, and I guess that's like the one again.
Speaker 1:one of the benefits of streaming now is that you can just, rather than just, have releases, you can kind of yeah, like you say, just add to it from time to time. Yeah.
Speaker 2:But I guess, in response to that question, I do have these different projects. So, yeah, there are things that I make them feel like a lucid thing, I guess, and I'll add them to that playlist. And then there's other stuff that I make I think, oh, that could be a refreshers track, or that could be a resume, or that could be something else Awesome.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's it, Luke. Thanks so much yeah.
Speaker 2:Pleasure.
Speaker 1:Okay, so that was me, Paul Hanford, talking with Luke Blair, aka Lukeid, and we had that conversation on the 12th of December 2023. Thanks so much, luke, for sharing your thoughts and your time with me for that. The album Tilt is out now on Glom. It's really good. Check it out if you've not had a listen to it.
Speaker 1:Yes, lost and Sound is proudly sponsored by Audio Technica Global but still family-run company that make headphones, turn tables, cartridges, microphones, studio quality yet affordable products, because they believe that high quality audio should be accessible to all, and I use their AT2020 USB mic to do all my interviews. It's so easy Just pull like it's straight in, you get studio quality sound. I fucking love it. Yeah, my book Coming to Berlin is available in all good bookshops or via the publisher Flossity Bless's website, and the music you hear at the beginning, at the end of every episode of Lost and Sound, is by Thomas Giddens Hyperlink in the show description. Right? So that's me for today.
Speaker 1:That might be me for the year. Actually, I might try and put one more episode out before the end of the year. I know that sounds a bit vague, but you know what it's like when it gets to December and it's that combination of just trying to get everything done and also sort of like you feel yourself just winding down slower and slower each day, even if the volume around you goes up more and more. But there might be one, or that might be it for this year. But either way, thanks so much for listening. I mega appreciate it. Hope you're having a great day and, yeah, chat to you soon.