Two weeks after relocating to Portugal from the UK in May 2016, a sudden and traumatic injury to his mouth and teeth provided Will Samson the excuse to put singing aside and focus on creating an almost entirely instrumental body of work.
As Samson describes the recording: “The whole process was about being open and allowing the music to flow out naturally, without letting my analytical mind become involved. To just press record on my tape machines and see what happens. This experiment allowed me to produce some honest documents of how I was really feeling at the time with all that was going on in my life. “Père” was recorded the day after returning home from hospital, with my friend Beatrijs De Klerck adding her violin parts a week or so later. I was still in a slightly dazed, sense of shock and recording this piece helped to settle me back down, after the surreal 48 hours in a Portuguese hospital bed.”
In contrast to his recent album, Ground Luminosity (which was meticulously crafted over a period of two years), Lua showcases Samson’s ability to improvise and create spontaneously, with equally engaging results, using his beloved tape machines (from a microcassette recorder to 1/4” reel-to-reel) to produce organic and textural soundscapes that are soaked with deep mood and emotion.
Lua features Benoit Pioulard (Kranky, Ghostly International) on “You Are An Ocean” and a cover by visual artist Gregory Euclide (known for his artwork for Bon Iver) that beautifully renders the sound of the album.
