Blue Movie

At times like Bowie swapping battle stories with Fever Ray, while Suicide swoons at Prince. Depeche Mode picking winners for an 80s John Hughes soundtrack I dunno, maybe picture Tom Waits’ best stab at Handel’s Messiah.. You know. DIY epics. Batcave reverb. Moog heartbeat. Alone in the spotlight, singing at gunpoint. One hand on your knee, the other in your pocket. You gotta make the choice. One last dance or another bout of basement drama The true confessions of a false prophet – but not necessarily Lukas Frank’s. Although he played and sung, produced and mixed everything here himself at home in LA, so who ya gonna believe Not one to repeat himself, Lukas has ditched Ink & Oil’s lush orchestrations to seek out a more intimate, electronic palette; jagged edges, beautiful surges and harsh truths. Lukas puts it this way: If there’s a through line with my records it’s that they all somehow relate to movies. If my last record was my most extravagant and aspirational, Blue Movie is my cheapest and most pathetic. Ink and Oil was made in earnest in studios with live strings and friends, this one was birthed alone in a windowless shed with fake instruments and synths; my worst impulses on display. At its best, this record aspires towards cinema in the way that the last porn theater in Los Angeles (the Tiki) aspires towards it. This intense raging against the dying of the light has seen Perfume Genius, Lauren Auder, Last Dinner Party, Diiv and The Horrors at his last few shows. Florence Welch confessed she gets goosebumps from Lukas’ music. And they aren’t the only ones. His songs grace the soundtracks of Department Q and The Queens Gambit and he’s made something wild for the new Tony Gilroy movie starring Pedro Pascal, in which he makes a small appearance. Storefront Church just debuted his incendiary soundtrack to P Staff’s Canicula installation at Venice’s Bienalle Arts Festival. And another collaboration is lined up for Paris next year.