Following the recent birth of his daughter, Luke De-Scisio was feeling so inspired that he wrote and recored an album in the span of six weeks. The result is Theo, an alt-folk gem that strips away any pretense of perfection to get at the pure, beating heart of the artist’s emotions. Subsequently, a Kickstarter campaign raised 166% of the funds he needed for a vinyl pressing, which is due on September 27 from Luke’s label, Folk Boy Records. To find out more, I dropped him a line…

Your new album, Theo, was inspired by the birth of your daughter. How did that event influence your songwriting—and how has it changed your life more broadly?

Honestly? Honestly, I know everyone says this…and, if someone hasn’t had children it just IS impossible to really totally understand. So, in a way, I really don’t want this to sound like ‘you had to be there dude’ or ‘you just wouldn’t get it’ …and the absolute last thing I want is for this to become some kind of cliquey thing that only speaks to people who’ve had this ‘experience’.    But, how to say it? other than…it’s just so human. So real.    

Impossibly, World stoppingly. Real.

…like a lot of people, we’d hoped for a ‘natural home birth’ with as little ‘medical intervention’ as possible. And, because we got the exact opposite of that. I think neither of us were prepared, psychologically, for how it panned out. So we just clung to each other, both completely awake and alert, staring deep into each other’s eyes; praying, feeling it, being there, alive.

At that moment you realize how enormous the barrier to entry is to be here. You realize how many things have to go precisely right for each and every single one of us to even exist. You realize how utterly priceless each and every life is. You just can’t fathom, at that moment, that you’ve ever viewed anyone, everyone, yourself, every thing as any thing less than just totally, utterly precious.

That was the process. Then the person arrives. And you meet them.

And then you kind of realize what all the great love songs are about. And your whole life up to that moment feels inevitable; ‘oh, this is where I met her’. And, you hold her for the  first time; her eyes LOCK with yours for the very first time and you feel, like, viscerally FEEL love. SEEING the ‘chain of life’ pour in…that just goes up and down through all history. I remember thinking of my mother, my grandfather, my father and all of his family…and then of her children. Going back and forth through this line in both directions…you feel, at that moment, in completely the right place.

So, it’s all just …enormous.    …violently, unquantifiably, enormously enormous.

Surreal. Petrifying. And utterly the best day of my life.

It only influenced my songwriting, in the sense that, I needed to get that down. To preserve it. To be able to feel that moment again, if ever, I lost touch with it. I felt so divinely tethered, my muse called for it, and I just picked up the phone. I knew I was changed and feeling thoughts that I’d never heard elsewhere so, it felt really important to make something a little more permanent of that. That could be an artifact of that time.

You wrote and recorded the album in the first six weeks following your daughter’s birth. How did you find the time?

I did! There was actually a LOT of time in a way. The whole World shrinks totally in. It all went macro. We were zoomed into this deep experience and…some of these songs were recorded at 4am, some were written and captured over the course of a 15 minute window when Robyn and Theo were sleeping. Some were more slowly drawn together over the course of little glimpses across sleepless nights by the light of a small red lamp. 

That’s the writing…but the recording never takes me long anymore. I don’t force it. I don’t do take after take after take trying to hone in on perfection. The whole ‘process’ is way more like surfing. I live, I let it happen, I be in my vibe, I occupy my truth, I am and then…when the song is ready…to be written…to be recorded…I don’t question it. I don’t stand in my own way. I open up and let it down and then I watch and hear myself capturing it. They’re wherever they are and then I, or we, get to be the first people to hear them.

However they got here. I know that when I had the eleven. It FELT like I’d made something. It felt done.

You’ve mentioned that your goal was to capture “not ‘perfection’ but the purest.” Can you talk a little bit about that distinction and why it’s important to you? 

I can and I’d love to!     

To me, the ‘purest’ just means the take that had to happen. The one where the emotion spilled over. That first instance where the lyrics and the chords and the frequency first totally coalesced into a single coherent sonic entity.         Think of it as ‘the take that if it wasn’t captured, you’d forever regret’.

The moment that feels like a memory as it’s happening. Where you zoom out on yourself and the room catches you doing it. Where you’re flying.

In the past I’ve had my computer crash during takes that felt like that and abandoned the song.

If it’s not gonna be that take…then it’ll be an impression of that take. Then it’ll be a pastiche of a moment. A rendition.

These albums are only gonna stare out through time…only gonna feel as real in 50,100 years if that was literally my soul speaking. If it’s calculus. If it’s a good attempt. Then it’s nothing, really. 

I’ve streamlined my process to just be as easy and light and quick to be recording as possible. Because, when that feeling is literally blowing through, when the vibes entwine. I need to be at the mic.

Your press materials describe your music as “Alternative-Folk.” What makes it alternative?

I think ‘folk’ gives off an impression. Of straw hats. Of suspenders and banjos. Of music that used to be relevant and cutting edge and actually speak of the people…but that has since drifted into being a pastiche of itself.       I think ‘folk’ has, in many instances, become a series of tropes that just are totally at odds with the essence that actually made it essential in the first place.

So, ‘alternative’ is just there to raise a flag. To say that…maybe this ISN’T that thing you’re thinking.

But, in all honesty, I think my folk is much more aligned to the true actual guiding energy of REAL folk.

It’s essential. It’s of my time. It’s of a person. It’s someone trying to be as real as they possibly can. With as little distraction. With as little information that could date it, as possible. It’s a mirror, basically, that hopefully shines out through any time. 

Folk is meant to be timeless. It’s meant to be OUR story.

So why for most people, it has gotten stuck about 50-60 years ago…that’s sort of beyond me. 

These ‘folk’ festivals are just time machines back to when sailors got lost at sea and their partners waited for them on the sea shore. It’s cute in a way…but it’s not real. Not relevant to us.

The album is being supported by a Kickstarter campaign. What expenses are you looking to cover? And you reached 166% of your goal. What are you doing with the additional 66%?

Every so often I produce an album that I feel needs preserving in a more tangible format than just…streaming.

A record that I think might have value to someone years from now if they’re rooting through a crate of vinyl and the cover catches their eye.

This was one of those albums so…I was hoping we’d raise enough money from supporters to help fund the vinyl pressing. 

And, by the collective grace of humanity, by their sheer generosity, we more than did that.

Those additional funds…I initially thought I could use that to help promote the album. But…in a way that feels like spending the money people have spent on the vinyl on something…that wont really benefit them. 

So, I’ll just say that the physical artifact of this record has evolved into something really quite exquisite. 

I can’t wait for people to have them. I think they’ll be something that people cherish.

Theo will be released on your own label, Folk Boy Records. You’ve described this turn of events as “scary.” What makes it scary?

Scary because I know the enormity of what that means. I know that, in order to do justice to the other artists on my label, what I’m undertaking here. With Folk Boy Records we’re genuinely trying to build something that artists are proud to represent. It’s my label so I have to be the pillar of that. I have to make sure that this album fulfils itself. And no one is gonna have more passion or determination for pursuing that as I am. So, yeh, I think it’s a little scary but I know the scope and the potential of what I’m shooting for. I know what the boys deserve. So… it is scary but in the way that fuels me. 

You’ve confirmed an album launch show on BBC6MUSIC with Huey Morgan. How did that come about?

Honestly just through good fortune and opportunistically seizing the moment.

Huey doesn’t live far from us and I bumped into him on the street at some point. I had a show planned for that evening and I invited him along, he couldn’t actually make that show but gave me his email and asked me to shoot him some songs.

The song I sent over he played on BBC6 and apparently the response he got was just really good so, that gave me a lot of confidence that, actually, what I’m aiming for; these very real and very present recordings do actually shine through and translate on that medium…on literally, prime-time, mainstream, Saturday morning radio. Which…

It’s a powerful lesson in hearing yourself that way and, ye, it really worked. So he’s spun a few more tracks and we’ve been talking and he seems to really believe in what I’m doing. And so, this has all just evolved from that. It’s an amazing opportunity and I’ve seen already how big his influence is, people are coming to shows from the BBC6 radio plays and…honestly, he’s just such a great guy, very supportive of me and I’m just absolutely incredibly grateful for the help he’s gifted me in bringing people to the music.

You sold out a show at London’s iconic St Pancras Old Church. Can you talk a little bit about that experience?

I can indeed. This was Folk Boy Record’s sort of, first big, flagship show. We just really wanted to put our name on the map so we booked out the most prestigious venue we could really think of and put all of our energy into trying to pack it out.

It was a massive gamble but it really paid off and, I think a lot of eyes are just on that venue in general, so…I like to think that a lot of people saw that we mean business here and that we can put on a really great show.

It’s such a special venue. It was only a few short months ago but I feel like something like that levels you up so much and, even compared to then, I feel like I’ve developed so much and I just can’t wait to show people how this experience and these songs have continued to just fuel my appetite for this and determination to just give my very, very best.

People just absolutely deserve that and we’re basically running to give that to them.

What’s on the horizon for you? 

Behind the scenes; a tonne of work. Making sure this album is in front of as many people as possible when it drops. Making sure that the words find people basically. Making sure that it fulfils itself. Whatever that means.

So…lots of reaching out trying to build connections, trying to explain to people why I think it’s important. Trying to give the context that makes it feel so full.

And then, outwardly, there’ll be an album launch show planned for when the vinyl arrive/the. We’re thinking Hoxton Hall or something…something iconic and that is more than just your average venue space, something ideally super inspiring and memorable.

Looking into next year, there’s some talk of taking all the boys to New Colossus Festival. SXSW in 2020 was gonna be a big one for me, I’d a tonne of great shows confirmed and then that event got canceled so, if I can get back there, that would be something I’d like to do.

We have a tour in Switzerland in November, we have a handful of just exceptional releases coming out on FBR. Alex Dover’s album is in its final stages. Fela Dakota’s is completely cooked and just something so, magnificently special. We’ll be doing our best with that. Cooza’s working on an EP which is already sounding like it’ll be something really quite remarkable and – on the label side in general – just a lot of development, trying to do justice to the boys. Trying to get them the opportunities, in front of the people, they deserve because, I think I’ve got a really remarkable clutch of just selflessly open, talented and fearless individuals on our hands and I think the World is better when people like that have the opportunity to express themselves. So – a lot – in short.

But all just in the bosom of and for the nourishment of my beautiful family. I’m in an utterly blessed time and I want to keep my eyes as open to that as I possibly can.