Lovers & Friends
Today I wanted to share some personal reflections on this moment in my life, but first I am happy to say, thanks to your generous support and pre-orders, we have now covered all upfront manufacturing costs of CDs, Cassettes, and Vinyl Obi Strips, and so we are all set for the June 2nd release of "Something is Announced by your Life!" .
This milestone is a testament to the power of our community and the unwavering faith in our journey as independent artists. We are in a good place, we own all our work, we owe nobody. The Future is Unwritten & we are free.
LUH has always been a manifestation of our dreams, founded on a DIY ethic and a commitment to authenticity. Together, Ebony and I have been hands-on in every aspect of the creation process of this new record, from the writing, recording & production, to manufacture, packing and shipping it to your doorsteps. We are truly Independent artists with No Label, No Management, No PR, No team of Industry insiders grooming us to be a marketable product. The past few years of LUH has been just the two of us, held by the community we have built on Patreon.
The journey has of course not been without its challenges & these trials and tribulations have on occasion left me on spiralling into doubt and uncertainty, questioning the path we had chosen. However, I have consistently emerged with a renewed perspective, Standing by the choices we have made, embracing the bigger picture whilst affirming the knowledge that we are constantly growing and learning, and that alone, in my comprehension of the cosmos, is the fulfilment of any sense of purpose.
Those of you that have followed my work for, damn, over a decade now, will know I've often wrestled with the restless refusal of the "Status Quo". I have always had this inescapable sense that I am not interested in chasing success within this system but contributing to building the next, and this has seen me decline many golden opportunities that a more strategic careerist would have embraced... Alas if nothing else, one day I will happily sing “I did it my way” these words from Bernardo Kastrup hold particular resonance to my heart’s longings;
"The rules of the game are all skewed- the game itself is not connected to reality… Is there value in contributing to the game to make it less wrong? to try and make it 10% better? No matter what action you take you can not help but contribute to the hysteria, you are just contributing to the craziness if you play by the rules of this crazy game."
In the past years I have been frequently inspired by the writing of Paul Kingsnorth, Charles Eisenstein, and recently the new book "At Work in the Ruins" by Dougald Hine. Between this trio and a few others, I have found a somewhat comprehensive articulation of our "crisis of civilisation" and some emergent sense of "Radical Hope" as to a way forward, seeds of potential as to what the new culture may become.
There is no doubt that challenging times lay ahead of us, this is what our recent song Dark Days grappled with, but throughout our new Album we strive to build on an uplifting sense of possibility as to what we can achieve when we rise rooted from the soul sovereign truth of our being.
It remains my steadfast conviction that We are all Souls of Infinite Potential temporally held within this finite experience, that appears so perfectly designed to provide the necessary lessons for our evolution.
I foresee our work with LUH during the coming years will be rooted in nurturing a cathartic release towards Resilience, Empowerment & Imagination.
For if we can not imagine our selves to be free, how will we ever be?
With love and gratitude.
Ellery
X