info
bio
LUKI is the experimental-pop project of singer/composer Lucy Duncan and collaborator/co-producer NIAC. They frequently work with songwriter Robbie Ellen (Personnel).
LUKI’s music takes inspiration from post-punk experimentalism, baroque pop, and the odd edges of musical theatre. An ambivalent love for the ballad puts the voice in a central role, supported by an eclectic cast of electronic and acoustic instruments and textures. Compelled, always, to try and capture the direct emotional appeal of a pop song out of and alongside layered worlds of lyrical and sonic storytelling. The result is estranged familiarity. Jamais vu. Like the work of science-fiction, or a half-remembered dream. LUKI records in studios, attics and kitchens, from under duvets and out in the woods.
LUKI’s most recent release Old Feelings is three songs in the messy and opaque process of coming to terms with loss. Voice, piano and synths. Old Feelings releases alongside a music video for the title-track, and precedes the forthcoming full-length album Half True.
LUKI’s songs move between the magical and the mundane, the heartfelt and the playful. ‘Seven Years Below the Flowers’ (Staying Out Records, 2024) is folklore-inspired synth-pop. The video, starring performance-artist Fiontasia as the Fairie Queen, has over 85,000 views on YouTube, and appeared on the Beteve TV show ‘Habitacio 910’.
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Previous works include Wisps on Glasgow’s experimental tape label GLARC in 2018. This collection of eight songs sees her exploring the far reaches of her voice in English ballads like ‘Sweet Suffolk Owl’ and ‘The Lover’s Ghost’ to the Music Theatre of Kurt Weill and Langston Hughes in ‘Lonely House’. Her song ‘Plum Wine’, was featured on Nick Luscombe’s BBC Radio 3 Late Junction show ‘Ones to watch from BBC Music Introducing’.
In 2020, The Parts was released on lathe-cut 8” single with Sheffield label Sonido Polifonico. This project was the start of a ongoing collaboration with NIAC and marked a turning point towards more explicit experimentation with electronic sound. LUKI’s work has been featured on BBC Radio 3’s Late Junction, Roddy Hart’s show on BBC Radio Scotland, BBC Radio Tees and Amazing Radio. LUKI is part of Staying Out Collective and has performed throughout the UK and in Europe.
“A tour de force of pop-orientated strangeness”
(Richard Bull)
press
“A tour de force of pop-orientated strangeness” (Richard Bull)
“Duncan’s witchy soprano, elegant piano and synth create a sense of time and place out of joint, as if Delia Derbyshire and Brian Eno had set up shop in an Edwardian parlour.” (Stewart Smith, The List)
“Astonishing Voice” (Bob Fischer, Radio Tees)
“Duncan’s remarkable voice comes through more clearly than ever, extemporising in her upper range like an English Mary Margaret O’Hara, then knocking us out with her alto” (Stewart Smith, The List)
“Wisps, is absolutely stunning. Deadly simple, with just piano, voice and synthesizer, Luki carries the songs with restraint and her mesmerising vocals. In ‘Gelsomina’, just after the chorus line a strange synthesizer sound – part trumpet, part voice, part Theremin – appears suddenly. This is perhaps a perfect summation of how much Luki’s music sounds like it should be in a mysterious, enrapturing film – it’s narrative driven, evocative, and with delicate touches of the surreal” (Nick Potter, Pink Wafer)
contact
For all enquires please contact:
lukiduncan@gmail.com
