Luke Requena - A Picnic With Ancestors

It’s time to write another quick piece about a musician I know, and that’s Vancouver-based synthesizer alchemist Luke Requena. Again, I’m probably biased here as I’ve known the artist in some ways personally for quite a long time, but I’m always happy to give props to such artists that have some longevity in their output — musical output of interest and great quality — that never quite bubble up over the waves in this very noisy, crowded world of musical creativity that we live in, especially now with thousands of releases coming out every day and more music than any one person could possibly consume in their lifetime.

Back at the turn of the millenium as I was playing in bands Radio Berlin (1998-2005) and A Luna Red (1999-2003), a new local band had come onto my radar called Raking Bombs (see clip below) — an explosive band pulling in influence from the spazzy, west coast hardcore sound that would probably sit well on the roster of a label like Gravity Records. The band, being a close group of friends, would morph a number of years later into the stunning, frantic, world-music influenced, celebratory party band with the obtuse name of Basketball (see clip below) whose outdoor parties in industrial areas of Vancouver became somewhat legendary. After moving to the UK in 2007 there were a number of times the band would meet up with me in London during their travels, and it was always a fun time.

Moving across the world from where you came from always puts a vast, physical barrier between people and with a new life in the UK I lost such connections with people from home over time, but in more recent years Luke Requena — whom had played in the aforementioned Raking Bombs and Basketball — started releasing his own music, unveiling a lush world of psychedelic drone and music that work would best for late night meditations and mental journeys to otherworldly places, starting with the 2021 album The Mirror Stage, which was released on the renowned UK label Castles In Space. I’ve listened to this album many times over the past few years as I have a habit of listening to a lot of what one might call low level listening in the wee hours of darkness. The synthesiser work is lush and well sculpted, with an ear for detail and sound that places it up there with some of the better kosmische music out there from the last 4-5 decades.

Where The Mirror Stage saw Requena’s compositions more laden with drones and long, dense synthesizer textures, the compositions on his newest release — Myth And Murmur which came out this year on the American label Shady Ridge — inject a bit more rhythmic synthesizer energy to the proceedings, giving the listener a feeling of being propulsed by some sort of mechanized force through a large and vast space.

This second album came out this summer and I opted to purchase it via download upon its announcement. In typical practice when my life is busy, I often collect new recordings over a month or two and then finally get around to listening to them when there’s more time and the vibe is right. Here in Glasgow within the last week the descent of autumn has been brought down with a noticeable force. The clocks went back this past weekend and the temperatures have dropped enough to start the “winter jacket” season. It’s in these times I tend to listen more heavily to releases such as this in the low level listening and mood department, and it seemed fitting to give Myth And Murmur a deep dive listen at this point.

It’s also a time when I tend to get into my writing a bit more, so expect more entries such as this and in general in the coming months.

With this second album there are more “sharper” sounds compared to the more meditative and diffused compositions on his first release. A broader selection of instruments come into the mix, including a saxophone (“Through The Smoke, The Lillies Wept”) and what sounds like a guitar (“The Headless Antelope”) minimally plucked in an Ennio Morricone style. Heck, there’s even some subtle percussive drum patterns being introduced to the mix, which steers this second album into more of a territory for some thriller film that one can picture in their head as they give this full album a listen.

However, with both sets of compositions the sense of cosmos and atmosphere prevails and the sound design work one can tell has had some thought and process put into. The track “A Picnic With Ancestors” features a lush trio of percollating synths that have a BBC Radiophonic Workshop quality with a tasteful amount of saturation and analogue delay. There’s also some subtle shifts in mood with this one, as the rhythmic pattern slightly alters it’s notes and chord structure, bringing a mild sense of tension to the piece. To me this sort of fits the title of the song — meeting ancestors in some sort of space/time anomaly and where a sense of re-connection yet fascination might be high.

All in all the album has a nice flow, and when one listens you can hear the attention to the detail of the pieces. As a musician that has been involved in numerous guises throughout the years, Luke Requena has managed to tap into the school of deeper listening with this one. Well worth checking out.