15 October 2021 - 0 Comments

Luke Buda (he/him) is a songwriter based in Te Whanganui-a-Tara (Wellington). Buda’s music finds influence in the warm strums that emanated from Laurel Canyon in the 1960s, the dreamy vocals of supreme 1970s soft rock and disco, and the digital delays and drum machines wafting out from the UK in the early 1980s. In this work, he locates the sweet spot between introspection and wry humour.

Following the singles Here Comes The Wind, Candy and Who Would Want To Be Lonely, the day has come where Buda releases Buda in its entirety.

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Now that the album is released Buda notes "I worked on it for about two years, and it has been finished for about two years, so it is with a great big sigh of relief that I finally pushed this baby out."

"There’s a lot of different sounds and vibes and also many of the assorted human feels inside the record. It’s fun to listen to it on headphones!"

Many of the different sounds Buda describes were created with help from a large range of collaborators, including guests like Don McGlashan; Joe Lindsay and Toby Laing from Fat Freddy's Drop; Riki Gooch; Dayle Jellyman; Jacqui Nyman; and all the members of The Phoenix Foundation. Special mention needs to be made of Anita Clark's (Motte) contribution, as she sang on every single track.

New Zealand novelist Damien Wilkins also contributed lyrics to three songs, and reflects that "Luke Buda is a little bit Elton, and now I’m a little bit Bernie Taupin. The lyrics for the songs I was involved with are about the climate emergency, an adult child leaving home for the first time to begin her life, and sex as a moment of reprieve from worrying about all kinds of awful futures, including the climate emergency. They are anxious words, sometimes made more anxious by Luke’s music (‘Here Comes the Wind’), sometimes made winsomely grand (‘She’s Arriving Soon’), and sometimes made dreamy (‘Don’t Think in Bed’)."

Luke Buda is a founding member of the The Phoenix Foundation, who formed in 1997 and have since released 7 albums and 4 EPs. They've been nominated for over 30 Aotearoa Music Awards and they've won a few too! The Phoenix Foundation have been shortlisted three times for the IMNZ's Taite Prize, and three times finalists in APRA's Silver Scrolls. In 2009 Buda won a Silver Scroll, for his co-writing credit on Lawrence Arabia’s Apple Pie Bed.

In 2016 Buda co-wrote and produced Sir Dave Dobbyn's Harmony House, and in 2017 he released an album as one quarter of the band Teeth (an outfit featuring David Long of The Mutton Birds). Since 2007 he has composed music for television and film as Moniker. Their work can be found in seminal Aotearoa films such as Eagle vs. Shark, Hunt For The Wilderpeople, and Boy, the latter winning them Best Original Score at the NZ Film and TV Awards. In 2018 the group took home the APRA Best Original Music in a Series for Cleverman.

Photo Credit: Doug Johns

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