Getting a glimpse inside Luca Eck’s world

Luca Eck, an artist based in Berlin, partakes in music production, DJing, art, and event planning. Their passion for music and creating a community speak for themselves, as they are constantly seeking out new artists to work and collaborate with. Luca’s instinct is what guides them to stay true to themselves while also continuing to redefine their sound (they have also hinted at trying out rap next). Avant-club, a musical style established by Luca, is described as “music that combines global sound cultures from around the world.”

“I think building worlds and combining things that seem super contrasting at first is kind of what my music is about. On the non-music side, I’ve been curating a lot of parties in Berlin and next year also in other cities, trying to bring cool artists from other cities to play their debuts in Berlin. I’ve booked, for example, 2hollis, Baby Morocco, Six Sex, because I feel like there was a gap in the scene in Berlin for this kind of music. Berlin and Germany are so focused on techno and house and there’s not so many people who dare to try something new. So me coming from a techno background but then in the past few years having transitioned to embracing a more alternative and also pop sound, I feel like because I started out in techno, that allows me to kind of introduce people into a new sound. This is because they recognize my name from the times where I was making something that was familiar to them. They still come to my parties, even though now it’s a different sound and they’re coming with an openness to discover something new and now it’s been really cool in the past few months that the parties have become a place for people to where they’re like, ah, at this party I can discover cool new music, and I am really grateful for that.”

What inspires you to make music?

“I think to be honest it's all the people I meet through it. Like for example with this EP I have one song with Estratosfera from EQ who's based here in Buenos Aires. I love them so much and we've been following each other on Instagram for like two years or something and then finally like a couple of months ago we started working on the song together and it's become I think my favorite of the EP...So I think creating music together with other people is what motivates me the most and I think in general anything real life connections like organizing events also is definitely something that really motivates me, because having success is mostly in terms of numbers online or something like that feels so distant and like it doesn't do anything with you emotionally… Also meeting fans in real life and like being on the street in Buenos Aires and somebody comes up to you and it's like ‘oh my god are you Luca Eck? I love your music so much I listen to this song a lot and I'm like that's something that makes me proud and happy and I want to keep going because it's real and it's not so abstract like a number online.”

 What themes are you most preoccupied with lately?

“I think lately it’s been a very personal time of self-discovery. Also musically, because I feel like for a long time I had kind of put my own needs below the needs of other people, be it in work and the private life. I feel like especially once you start having some success and working with labels, publishers, management, everybody just wants to tell you what to do and they’re trying to make you make the next hits and I feel like that drains the creative energy out of you. Suddenly you start thinking not about what do I feel right now, what do I want to create, but more of like how can I create something that follows trends and how do I create something that goes viral or that has a lot of streams. And I think now in the past few months I was able to get back to a point where I’m like fuck that shit and let’s just create art both on the music side and on the visual like I don’t want to make economic decisions when it comes to music. I feel like now finally I've been at a point again where I can have the courage and the trust to just be like, hey, I don't want to do what everyone tells me but instead be like this is me, this is my art and you do with it what you want I'm just putting it out here, and that feels really nice.”

You stated you started playing classical music at a very young age. How does that discipline show up in your work today?

“I feel like by now I don’t really perceive it super actively, like I rarely sit down and I’m like okay I’m gonna put a g minor cord, it’s more like I feel the training has become part of my intuition and producing that I can just know the relationship between notes and melodies and I am super grateful for that. I feel like you can often hear the difference in the musicality of people whether they had some sort of training, be it classical, or jazz or pop, or between those who just start producing one genre from the beginning because I feel like it gives you a bit more mental flexibility if you come from something else and then you approach it rather than electronic music production being the only thing you do. I feel like sometimes you are more stuck in a box rather than seeing it as one way to create music, and I think especially now with Rosalia's new album coming out, I’m like wow maybe it’s time to bring classical back. One of my new projects I want to embrace my roots a bit more and maybe do more of a super experimental album which is like a composition with string orchestra.”

Has your relationship with identity shifted through the creation of music and elements within it such as touring and collaborations? Can you talk to me about how your collaborations are brought to life?

“So usually with collaborations there's two ways I do it. One, especially with this EP, a lot of things were done in a camp. This was at the Primavera Sound Festival in Barcelona. My publisher was organizing together with the festival like a camp where they brought together artists from the lineup with artists from their international offices and I was kind of the German delegation at the camp and that was super cool because it was like maybe 10 to 15 of us and we were all in Barcelona together and it felt like a bit of a holiday but still we were creating new music together every day in the studio and that's one way where I really like to collaborate. The other way is when it's remotely usually like the things with Estratosfera, that was very much of like, hey, I have a list of people I would like to work with and I think about together with my team who’s the best person to reach out to them, and then when they’re like yeah this is sick I want to jump on that, we send things back and forth. We do edits and that’s also a process I really enjoy because when you’re in the studio together and you only have one day, and sometimes it creates pressure and I feel like when you do it remotely you know they can take three weeks to think about the lyrics it doesn’t have to happen on the spot. Even though it can be a bit distant it can be more organic in a way and I think collaboration has really changed the way I approach music. Back in the days I was always just making music alone and I didn’t really like to work with other people but I think that was also because back then in Berlin, I didn’t know so many people who had a similar vision to me but when I discovered my peer group on the internet that completely change the way that I approach music. Now I feel like almost everything I do is through collaboration because I think that’s just the beautiful part about making music for me. Like the social aspect of it and the emotional aspect of like, hey, we are two people and let’s see what we can do together like what happens if we put our totally different brains together and see if we can find a middle ground around where we can collaborate.”

How does your latest EP, Flesh, represent your work to date? 

“I think that I was trying to achieve, and I think I did achieve with the EP, creating a summary of my musical journey. Up until this point I feel with the releases before that I was more trying out things and now I feel like I found the way to really encapsulate my sonic identity but make it 2025, I feel like some of the melodies and sound design I could have also done in 2019 in my first releases but I managed to find a way of be like okay how does Luca in 2025 make a song out of this idea? I feel like I really found a way to represent myself in its entirety and not only one part or another part of me but really my sound is that and I find a way to bring it all together.”

How does Flesh push back against societal pressure to simplify identity in the digital world?

“I think from both industry people but also online, you’re told to flatten yourself and only like one thing. I feel like artists who do many different sounds and many different genres are always told that it's too complex and people want something simple. I also feel like as a queer person who doesn't identify as male or female it's a similar thing where people want to always push you to be one thing and I feel like there's always so much compromise that comes with that like being forced to choose one thing to define yourself and I think in music and in life I just want to enable a space where all parts of myself can coexist and where I also celebrate this like multi-facetedness. I think both from the industry and from people online you get so much hate for doing more than one thing. I think one of the things that really inspired this EP on a personal emotional level was also something that happened earlier this year in like March and now it's been popping up again. There was this meme that people made from me…that emerged in like an incel right wing forum that was just about queerness and men and being from Berlin, and generally I find it quite funny but like just with it existing in that incel right wing forum and then being shared on hundreds of meme pages within that community…and seeing the kind of messages and comments and threats of death and violence that people were saying, the majority of people in Germany and probably also in many other countries see queerness as an illness and something like less than human and I think that was a very tough experience. It made me want to make more of a statement with the music and I also chose this year for the first time to have a more like feminine representation online despite what happened the last time I posted with makeup but I was like no I'm not gonna let this bring me down I want to keep going.”

Are there any unconventional production techniques that feel essential to your process? 

“I think using very disparate influences is definitely something I like to do unconventionality and I think you know everybody's music and art is always inspired by someone else's but I think the key to making something creative and something new is for your references and your influences to come from very different areas. If my influence is 2hollis and Snowstrippers then the music I make will sound more of a copy rather than being okay I'm influenced by 2hollis but I'm also influenced by classical music and I'm also influenced by some underground Argentinian music and early 2000s and I feel like if you combine the more confusing, the more interesting the result is going to be. I think in general what I like to do is always fuck things up and whenever I have something that is super noisy or super experimental I want to maybe add a very pop vocal to create that contrast or when I have like a super catchy melody maybe I want to add some really distorted brutal sound design to it because if something goes too sweet or too brutal it doesn't feel like me anymore.”

Where do you see your sound heading to next?

“I think lately I've been very inspired by rap music so I think I'm gonna do more things that are kind of a crossover but I don't know if it's too crazy to do that under my name maybe I need to do like a side project but then it could be also funny to do like classical music with like auto-tune rap vocals. I feel like maybe I'm gonna do that and I know I want to do in the summer for my next record, I want to like rent a house in Spain and fly all my favorite artists and writers there and then spend a week there no phones just making music I would love to like create more of those little rituals, creation of music to make it all a bit more special.”