STUDIO DIARY: Luboku Takes Us Behind The Scenes Of His New Album

These were all shot on my 1982 Pentax 35mm camera in B&W. A short collection of stories around the Space Walk album.

The Studio

The album Space Walk was made almost entirely in this space - a little unassuming shed at the back of my family home. 

The Space

I keep the setup sparse with just one or two synths/bits of equipment at a time. I find the lack of distractions helps me keep focussed while writing. 

Gear Highlights - Moog

A large portion of the Space Walk album was constructed with this bad boy. My moog sub-phatty has been a trusted companion for over four years now. I find it captures a certain elegance that I can never create with software synths. It actually features in every Space Walk track.

MS20

I was lucky to borrow a friend’s MS20 during the creation of Space Walk - having a new piece of analogue hardware at my fingertips really kept me exploring different sonics as I was late in the album process. This one makes an appearance on some of the more techno numbers, Pale Blue Dot, Pt. 1 and 2, Apollo, and Lift Off.

The Mix

While writing Space Walk, I was lucky enough to run some of the tracks through this crazy SSL desk from Sing Sing Studios in Melbourne before they shut down. It was a pretty wild experience hearing the tracks through such a large system - it made me wish there was a full-length Space Walk movie so everyone could experience that same level of massive sub-bass.

Lake Corangamite

I travelled to regional Victoria at the beginning of 2020 with my manager to take some photos at this surreal location, Lake Corangamite. It’s an eerie salt lake that I thought represented an outer space planet. Travelling to this area was about the same time I had begun writing Circles, and it was just before we went into lockdown in Melbourne. 

Luna - My Dog

I got Luna at the start of the first lockdown - she was the cutest, smallest puppy but as you can see she’s become a beautiful full-grown doggo. She’s been the best companion while I’ve been home for almost six months, she also loves the studio.

Lockdown 2.0

Like a lot of us, I found the second lockdown in Melbourne brutal. It was at the very end of the writing process, I was exhausted with mixing and finalising those tiny details. In the end - it got too much for me and I made a permanent exit to rural Victoria, where I worked on a friend’s farm and finished the album in the wilderness.

Final Mixdown

I was mixing the album right up until the absolute deadline. I’d worked on the tracks for so long that I definitely found it hard to let them go. 

When I eventually got the masters back, I was so nervous to hear the full-length experience that I put it off for a week. Finally, I sat down and just put it on. It’s hard to describe the feeling of listening back to a body of work that’s taken two years to write - it was a profound moment and I just remember feeling so relieved that I didn’t immediately fault it. I just thought, 'Huh - this actually kinda works.'