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Luke Una – El Soul Cultura Takeover

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Beginning his journey as an original Sheffield house young blood in the mid-1980’s and then later Manchester, Luke has gone on a four decade musical journey. This has seen him travel all over the world with his genre defying alchemic fusion of music which has seen him became a respected and prominent figure in many underground musical scenes. Luke was originally one half of the DJ duo and production team The Unabombers with Justin Crawford. They together detonated The Electric Chair, a cornerstone cult night in the UK club scene. It was here in the mid 1990’s that his sound started to develop and he quickly gained international attention, playing alongside Theo Parrish, Harvey and Moodyman, creating a deep musical journey. Luke and Justin later formed The Elektrons gaining critical acclaim. Luke has made significant contributions to the music community through his involvement in various club nights, record labels, fanzines, radio shows and festivals including Electric Elephant, a Croatian festival which paid homage to a wild eclecticism from Balearic to Brazilian to E Soul, House, Disco and Techno and beyond. Luke is the founder of Manchester’s much loved long standing Homoelectric night and Homobloc festival for 12,000 souls which has been at the forefront of UK’s LGBTQ+ cultural landscape. Luke’s radio show on Giles Peterson’s Worldwide FM born out of the pandemic saw his 6 hour radio shows from spiritual jazz, cosmic, machine soul, to deep bass buggin futurism gain cult status. Luke’s partnership with Mr Bongo went onto create É Soul Cultura, two complications – Volume 1 & 2 which went onto evolve into its own record label. Its first release was Transmission Towers – Transmission One, which Luke is an executive producer. É Soul Cultura has now become an event in its own right detonating in various basements, woods, global festivals, stage takeovers, and recent road block street parties. Luke’s most recent release “Everything Above The Sky” compilation on RE:WARM Records explores late-night, after-hours meditations on sound. Luke himself has also played at renowned festivals and clubs internationally, including We Out Here, Glastonbury, Houghton, Repercussion at The Warehouse Project, Love International, Heideglühen in Berlin, Southport Soul Weekender and sell out shows at Koko and Fabric in London. Today Luke remains, as ever, at the forefront of a young changing scene, pairing the momentous legacy of Manchester’s 80s and 90s scene with the delivery of what today’s club communities need to get down.

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