Luke Thompson

Luke Thompson w/- Nic Manders
Luke didn’t mean to take five years to finish The Trials and Tribulations of Adam and His Seed, the follow-up to 2016’s Tui-nominated Hosts. The concept for the album had been percolating for a while, an unformed sense; a “spirit, a hunch, a colour”. Something archaic and prophetic. A wide-lens look at mankind and his struggle to exist. A return to folk music at its most elemental definition; songs as cultural stories, spanning generations like family heirlooms.

Thompson’s songs of “death and love and life, hate and cynicism, hope and peace, power and pain, warmth and shelter” are asking questions that may never properly be answered. Who are we? Why are we here? The stuff of the human condition that can’t be tied up tidily with a bow.

After nearly two years of recording and re-recording songs at home, he turned to long-time collaborator Nic Manders (Brooke Fraser, Katchafire, Lydia Cole) to draw a line under the work. He realised that, as Da Vinci said, art is never finished, only set free.

In The Trials and Tribulations of Adam and His Seed, Thompson turns his attention to everything from biblical themes to politics and privilege and the bittersweet nostalgia of fairy tales in a world of modern anxiety. It may have taken five years to carve out the work within, but Thompson’s expansive, philosophical album has been set free right on time.

Multi-faceted music maker Nic Manders takes home the prize for liner note mentions. He’s worked with most of the industry’s national treasures on some of the country's most recognised albums, running all sides of the desk in the roles of producer, mixer, engineer and session musician. As a composer for film and television, he's created the soundtrack to countless iconic campaigns and provided production music for some of the country's biggest TV shows. Nic's also curated music for high-end corporate events across New Zealand, from bespoke string sections to pop-up orchestras.