Luke Escombe is an ARIA-nominated singer-songwriter, who combines blues, rock and soul influences with subversive humour, poetic lyrics and storytelling.
Luke's released numerous albums and EPs with Luke Escombe And The Corporation, as well as one under his own name – 'Skeleton Blues' from 2017.
Now, Luke has dropped the second single from his forthcoming album 'Whale Beach Road'. The single is called 'Sacred River'.
“'Sacred River' is the second single from an ambitious new studio album that I funded almost entirely through Jobkeeper,” Luke describes. “Sadly the Jobkeeper money ran out before I could hire any professionals to make a sick video for me so I made one myself using Canva and an animator I found on Fiverr.”
'Sacred River' begins a timid, steady groove, pulling the listener in and building the anticipation – before it blooms, and evolves into an all-out hypnotic feast for the senses, and its video heightens the hypnosis. Luke plays lead guitar on the track (recorded in one take!) while Clayton Doley adds extra layers of swirling tension on the Hammond organ, and chorus backing vocals are supplied by Sarah Belkner, Darren Percival, Alice Terry and Daniel Mifsud.
scenestr is stoked to be able to premiere the track's music video below. Enjoy.
“The lyrics hint at all kinds of possibilities but to me this is a song about an ex-soldier who’s now a FIFO mining worker in a remote desert location. There is maybe a wife and young child somewhere in his life, either waiting at home or already estranged.
“He is an insomniac who takes all kinds of things to try and keep the nightmares of his past life at bay, while still holding space in his heart for the possibility of love.”
The music video went through many processes, and encountered a few hiccups along the way – but the result is a swirling, chaotic visual accompaniment to a song which feels like an all-encompassing journey in itself.
“The original aim was for the whole video to be animated. I loved the 30-second clip that plays in the first chorus and had gone ahead and commissioned the full clip, but then all of a sudden Fiverr cancelled the animator’s account without any explanation, so I went ahead and cancelled my own account,” Luke explains.
“The belt-tightening nature of COVID had already got me in the mindset that I needed to figure out how to do as much sh.t as possible myself, so I started to look into the storytelling possibilities of Canva and ended up disappearing into the edit process for a solid week. You have no idea the difference that 0.2 seconds makes to how a cut makes you feel until you start editing images to music. Also, if I’d shot this video myself I doubt it would have had as many helicopter gunships and explosions.”
“I think the end result is somewhere between a traditional music video and a visualiser. It put me in mind of the visuals that used to play in night clubs like Sublime on a Friday and Saturday night while you were on the dance floor (showing my age here). Anyway, I hope it takes people on a trip.”
Luke Escombe plays Hotel Etico (Blue Mountains) 12 August and The Shack (Narrabeen) 3 September. The album 'Whale Beach Road' is released 21 August.
