Luke Elliott is an English-born musician, composer, and synthesist based in Amsterdam. On Every Somewhere, his forthcoming AKP Recordings debut, Elliott utilizes sampling and re-sampling, modular and analog synthesizers to construct a buoyant and effervescent dreamworld.

During a trip home to the UK in 2023, Elliott made a series of field recordings, paying particular attention to the inescapable nature of human-made sounds. “The crossover between artificial sound and nature,” Elliott says, became a central theme, a subject for particular consideration, whether by “leaning into the sounds of people shouting alongside bird calls and breezes” or by incorporating a friends’ recording of the sea organ of Zadar, a large scale land art instrument which plays music via sea waves passing through it's tubes.

Though Every Somewhere is largely serene, Elliott considers it “a kick in the ass.” Interactions between humans and the greater natural world are woven into beautiful ambient tapestries that will appeal to fans of Dustin Wong, Joanna Brouk, or Tim Hecker's mellower side. But underlying this is a concern about the ways in which energies are exchanged –– or contaminated. Elliott points to a postcolonial approach, a fascination with the concept of the Columbian exchange, and the destructive legacy of colonialism.  

But the aesthetic serenity, perhaps, emerges from a central optimism. In creating Every Somewhere, Elliott says, “I imagined a new planet, safe for everyone, unbound from the human societal structures that permitted how we live in our world today.” It is an exploration of what Elliott calls a “Pre-Death Cosmosis, in which we do not have to wait until death to achieve connection of unity with the cosmos. It is not a distant dream but a present reality, waiting to be embraced.”

Voyaging patiently and thoughtfully between organic and digital textures, Every Somewhere vividly evokes a sense of wonder and an immutable freedom to imagine. These qualities are the soul of this music, sharing something profound in common with the work of Pauline Anna Strom.

Luke Elliott’s greatest strength is his ability to imagine. And Every Somewhere is indeed the sound of an artist imagining, dreaming of, and focusing on an alien world which could be our own.