For those of you who aren’t familiar with Adelaide’s Luke Lomb, take a look in your local Garage. If he’s not behind the wheels with his favourite slices of electro house and his digital DJ rig, he shouldn’t be far away. This Saturday he’ll be there for sure, doing it with Sydney’s Ajax at the final show of the inthemix05 tour. Recently returned from snow-capped alpine heights, Luke has his head in the clouds and his feet firmly on the ground.
Luke Lombe’s relationship with Garage is a long standing one, and has seen him on regular rotation for the last three years. It’s obvious talking to Luke that it’s not about him when he’s working behind the decks, it’s all about giving the clubbers what they want. While at home playing electro and tech house styled tracks at the moment, his taste is known to be fickle, and was once a chief proponent of breaks in days gone by. Talking crowd trends, he’s a keen observer… according to Luke the ladies like vocal tracks that they can sing along to, and the lads like it instrumental and harder. If it comes to pleasing one or the other, Luke always puts the ladies first… afterall, you don’t get complaints when the floor is full of happy dancing girls!
While demand for Luke’s particular tastes and dancefloor attention has been consistent throughout his Garage days, Luke has a life outside of DJing… and spent much of last year enjoying it, far removed from little old Adelaide. A keen snowboarder, Luke packed his boots and his ultra-convenient DJ rig and took off to Europe, where he spent three magical months in the Alpine town of Chamonix, France (among other places). Nestled into the mountains near the Italian and Swiss border, Luke was in his element: snowboarding by day, and playing out by night. Living in the town was certainly an advantage when it came to landing gigs, and after the success of his first set demand for his work boomed.
Always a forward thinker, Luke couldn’t imagine lugging crates of records around from gig to gig anymore, having put the vinyl aside sometime ago. Still an occasional record buyer, he’s no CD-DJ convert though… Luke instead belongs to the new wave of laptop-driven future DJs. Luke buys his music in WAV or AIFF format or converts it from its original format, storing it on his computer, then queuing and mixing with digital controller turntables… a technology that for many is hard to understand. In short, he controls the music via a ‘dummy’ record on each turntable, and assigns the tracks from a list of files stored on his Apple Mac. Amazingly, Luke’s been doing this now for three years, and is truly a pioneer in the application of this technique in Australia. The technology of course, has evolved during that time, ironing out the bugs but still leaving many stubborn critics who can’t see that the system is still very traditionally operated. Luke is certainly no Mili Vanilli mime act! Needless to say the ‘crateless’ DJ carries a much lighter load, and the metamorphosis made him a much lighter traveler.
While operating at the cutting edge of DJ technologies, Luke still loves his vinyl, and gets sent promos regularly to facilitate his club-charting work for ARIA. His favourite online spots for tunes are ‘hardtofind’ and ‘juno’ though often he’ll have to buy the platter himself in order to beat the hungry wolves to the latest underground release. Moving into production himself, he leans toward Ableton Live and Logic, and produces his own brand of funky house. He’s also recently completed two remixes, one of Mobin Master’s ‘Getting Away With It’ and the other for The Love Safari’s ‘Give In’ which is currently charting in the ARIA Top Twenty. His own back-catalogue is growing fast too, and his Sydney-based management is testing his patience with requests to hold back his ready releases until he has an album to push. If Luke ends up with creative block, don’t fret though… he’s determined to release the singles either way in 2006. His track ‘Money Shot’ is already available on the compilation CD ‘Fresh Air’.
Having played huge gigs like Two Tribes, Good Vibrations, Shores on a New Years Day, Enchanted and countless others around the country, Luke still has plenty of love to share with the local scene. Playing Moskva (vodka bar), Savvy and Loco (Sky City) regularly, he even turns it up for the country folk every long weekend, at the Grand Tasman in Port Lincoln. Through the years Luke’s relationship with music has changed a little, and despite being on his way to completing a degree in Commerce, he doesn’t necessarily want to make music his sole business. He says it helps him to understand the mechanisms of the industry, but even after many years behind the decks it’s still the kicks that he craves, not the kickback. Where these are concerned, Luke gives as good as he gets… and we’re all in for a serve when he appears at Garage on Saturday night. Supporting Ajax for the Adelaide inthemix.05 launch party alongside fellow Garage regular Filthy Rich, it’s going to be one hell of a party.
Luke Lombe plays inthemix.05 at Garage Bar (Waymouth St), Saturday December 3rd. Tickets are $10 at the door… check the ‘whatson’ for more details!
