L.U.C.

Łukasz Rostkowski, known by his stage name L.U.C., is a composer, music producer, songwriter and singer. He is renowned as a completely unconventional and eclectic artist, and his productions are distinguished by his panache and courage in going beyond established conventions.

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Łukasz Rostkowski (L.U.C.), photo: Tomasz Stańczak / Agencja Wyborcza

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The words of Piotr Metz describe Łukasz Rostkowski perfectly: ‘Afflicted with creative ADHD, he consistently follows his own multimedia path without looking at the market, the industry or anything’. Despite his lack of musical education, he is an extremely talented artist, having won numerous awards for his compositional work. He has said of himself that two opposing forces clash in him: perfectionism versus tempo, spontaneity and dynamics. Associated mainly with hip-hop, he mixes and blends musical genres, moving beyond sound to the realm of image and word: in 2004, he proposed his own philosophical vision of the four galaxies of art, which involves treating music, film, graphics and words as a single, unified message. In his work one can find a wide variety of inspirations – from philosophical or oneiric to historical and patriotic. He is the creator of numerous educational projects, such as the historical series Understanding Poland (Zrozumieć Polskę) and Pass On (Podaj Dalej), aimed at helping debuting artists.

Born on October 16, 1981 in Zielona Góra, Rostkowski graduated from law at the University of Wrocław. About his first steps in music he said:

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The beginnings were especially difficult. I didn't know how to edit music, how to produce. I was from outside the environment. I didn't have the cash to buy beats, and I didn't know the software or anyone who could teach me. I would sit down at the computer and spicy words would fly around like chili in a dish marked with four peppers on the menu.

In 2003, together with Bartłomiej ‘Spaso’ Spasowski, he formed the hip-hop band Kanał Audytywny, which released a total of three albums between 2003 and 2005. The first of these, Spasoasekuracja (2003), was a self-released underground album, while the second, Płyta Skirtotymiczna (2004), had already been released by the MTJ publishing house. The third and last album before the band went on hiatus, Neurofotoreceptoreplotyka Jako Magia Bytu (2005) received a Fryderyk nomination in the hip-hop/R&B album of the year category. Rostkowski also directed the music video for the album's promotional track Klinika Psychoromana.

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Kanał Audytywny - Auditive Channel - Klinika psychoromana

Albums

The reason for the suspension (until 2012) of the band Kanał Audytywny was the development of Rostkowski's solo career. Indeed, between 2006 and 2018, he released 11 solo albums, though not without guest appearances. Each of them tells a separate story, and the narrative goes beyond the music itself. L.U.C.’s debut release was Haelucenogenoklektyzm: Przypowieść o Zagubieniu w Czasoprzestrzeni, published in 2006 and critically acclaimed as a strong, expressive, fresh and thoughtful debut. Guest appearances on the album included Rahim, Igor Pudło, Leszek Możdżer, Magiera and Andrzej Smolik.

His second solo album, Planet L.U.C. – Polaqwitu from 2008 is more of a multimedia work, which included a CD of music, a book and video footage. According to the album description:

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Substantively, Planet LUC is a manifesto and commentary on the mentality of Poles, a rebellion against the Soviet mentality and pop culture compared by the artist to Strasburger’s jokes from Familiada. The album gradually evolves, like a plot, and ultimately turns out to be a timeless parable about the search for happiness and fulfillment. [...] With brilliant, highly original lyrics and metaphors, the project has the potential to interest different generations and subcultures. Here, journalism mixes with satire, tragedy and psychedelia with comedy, and poetry with storytelling.

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L.U.C - PLANET L.U.C + NZK - HAPPY END

Two years later (2010) the second album from the Planet L.U.C. project was released: Energocyrkulacje. In keeping with the title, it is meant to be a further serving of good energy, generated by inviting various performers to collaborate and create their own arrangements of songs already known to Polaqwitu audiences. These collaborators included Krzysztof Pełech, Nushee, Smolik, Brefka and Tomek Dudzic. New renditions of already known songs sometimes resulted in completely different meanings, while inviting other artists to cooperate was related to the implementation of the Podaj Dalej project.

With his next album, Rostkowski went in a completely new direction. On September 17, 2009, the 70th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland, he released 39/89 – Zrozumieć Polskę (39/89 – Understanding Poland). It is a journey through 50 years of the country's history – from the outbreak of World War II to the fall of communism. The album was recorded in the form of a radio play, with fragments of recordings of speeches by the most important historical figures of the period – Józef Beck, Stefan Starzyński, John Paul II, Lech Wałęsa or Adolf Hitler – woven into the songs. The musical layer, in turn, combines electronica, ambient, jazz and concrete music.

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Łukasz Rostkowski (L.U.C.), photo: Renata Dąbrowska / Agencja Wyborcza

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The album with the awkwardly pronounceable name PyyKyCyKyTyPff (2010) is an extremely intriguing musical experiment. L.U.C. is the orchestra man here – literally, since all the sounds on the album come from his voice, properly processed by analog and electronic converters. He dispensed with musical instruments, instead recording all the songs also in a non-vocal, ‘karaoke’ version. The album's title thus turns out to be an onomatopoeic rendering of beatboxing.

The second album in the Zrozumieć Polskę series after 39/89 was released in 2011. The album, Warsaw WAR/SAW – Zrozumieć Polskę was produced in cooperation with the Warsaw Uprising Museum. The music here was juxtaposed with recorded memories of the participants of the uprising from the museum's Oral History Archive, resulting in a unique listening experience – unrelated to any anniversary or celebration, hence free of pathos. ‘Fortunately, we tried to maintain cheerfulness in even the most tragic moments’, says an insurgent on the recording of the song Bardzo Dobry Piesek a Masło Rosło na Budynkach (A Very Good Dog and the Butter Grew on the Buildings). In keeping with this idea, the Warsaw Uprising is presented in a humorous way, while the moody yet light music is reminiscent of Warsaw's backyard bands featuring accordion (Jacek Berg), trumpet and percussion (Adam Lepka), bass and double bass (Jakub Olejnik) and guitar (Dawid Korbaczyński), enhanced by electronics and ambient sounds (L.U.C.). Mirosław Pęczak called the album ‘a multi-expressive work, where words can play and music can mean’. Unlike the dominant narrative, the subjective memories of the insurgents focus on the social, rather than military, perspective on history.

The next multimedia project, Kosmostumostów (2011), consisted of a parable, an album, music videos, a comic book, murals created in the urban space and audiovisual concerts that are the glue of the other parts. It is an innovative kind of artistic expression, from which emerges a micro-world – the fairytale Wrocław, the title city of a hundred bridges. The story told in the project carries a universal, philosophical message about finding faith in oneself, in one's dreams, about discovering one's vocation. The story, surreal in spirit, is also autobiographical, as the protagonist is L.U.C. himself or his alter ego. The album features guest appearances by representatives of various Wrocław-related circles: Jan Miodek, Natalia Grosiak, Leszek Cichoński, among others.

Together with the Motion Trio, Rostkowski recorded two albums in 2013: Nic Się Nie Stało and City of Harmony, featuring instrumental compositions from the former. With accordion accompaniment in a hip-hop rhythm, L.U.C. settles accounts with his own life, primarily his thirties and uncertainty about the future. For this experimental collaboration, the musicians received the Third Program's Music Award – ‘Mateusz’ in the popular music category.

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L.U.C & Motion Trio feat. Ania Rusowicz - Iluzji łąka #luc #nicsieniestalo #motiontrio

That same year, Rostkowski released Sleepoholic – a solo conceptual album of relaxation and sleep. As the description on the album states: ‘for full effect, a quiet session on headphones in a comfortable horizontal position after dinner or immediately before falling asleep is recommended. Do not listen while driving’. It's ambient and calming music, which is meant to help with falling asleep or enable one to enter a trance state. It's not an album that's expected to conquer the charts, but it's a novel concept, showing that L.U.C. still has plenty of out-of-the-box ideas in store.

Przekrój (2014) is an album that was created to celebrate the musician's 11th anniversary as an artist. It contains fan-selected songs, also from out-of-print albums, as well as the new single ‘Dziękuję’. The two-disc album, with guest appearances by Rahim, Buka, Czesław Mozil, Mesajah and Vienia, is divided into four parts, each of which shows a different stage of the artist's work.

Also released in 2014, the album REFlekcje o Miłości Apdejtowanej Selfie was again something new in Rostkowski's work – a reckoning with unhappy love. In the lyrics, L.U.C. recalls the difficulties he faced – an accident during a concert when he fell into a trapdoor on stage, and an emotional breakup with his wife - and treats the music as self-therapy. The album features samples of songs by Halina Frąckowiak, Andrzej Nardelli, Magda Umer, Irena Jarocka, Krystyna Prońko, Stanisław Sojka, plus guest appearances by Buka, MC Silk, Magiera, K2, Mesajah and Rahim.

L.U.C.’s subsequent solo album was released in 2018. Maintained in a cinematic atmosphere, Good L.U.C.K. features many artists: Tomasz Kot, Katarzyna Figura, Cezary Studniak, Laboratorium Pieśni, ES.CE, Karolina Czarnecka, Bovska, Arkadiusz Jakubik, Sarsa, Gutek, Robert Cichy, Wojciech Mecwaldowski. The musical material is melodic and catchy, combining various genres – folk music, rap, pop and jazz-chill beats. The overall message is positive, referring to life's hardships and setbacks with detachment.

Rebel Babel

In 2015, under the auspices of the European Capital of Culture Wrocław 2016, Rostkowski together with Jan Eleński (John Feat) founded the Rebel Babel Ensemble big band. This is a large-scale musical project, an international brass band, bringing together both professionals and amateur musicians. Its goal is to build dialogue through music, and combine traditional music from different regions of the world with hip hop, jazz and rap. Local musicians and orchestras are invited to concerts and performances, and young musicians are given the opportunity to meet celebrities and professional artists on stage.

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L.U.C, Rapsusklei, Wöyza (Rebel Babel) - Manifest (one shot performance)

To date, more than 10,000 musicians from Poland, Germany, Sweden, Spain, the Czech Republic, Belarus, Hungary, Slovakia, Ukraine, Lithuania and Portugal have played in Rebel Babel projects. The orchestra travels throughout Poland and the world, presenting musical projects such as 100 Years of Polish Film Music and Polish Film Composers in Hollywood (the projects were carried out by the Rebel Babel Film Orchestra section). The Rebel Babel Orchestra opened and closed the European Handball Championships, organized flash mobs in Madrid, where it played concerts in the streets with the sounds of car horns blended in, or in Barcelona conducted by the subway escalators. It has also performed on the main stages of major festivals, including Open'er, Przegląd Piosenki Aktorskiej, and Gdańsk Dźwiga Muzę. Rebel Babel has also released two albums, Dialog I in 2016 and Dialog II in 2022. The momentum of the orchestra, the numerous imaginative productions and musical challenges, as well as the extraordinary talents that co-create it – all this adds up to a completely unique project.

Considerable fame for Rebel Babel, or rather its film section Rebel Babel Film Orchestra, came with the film music for The Peasants. Rostkowski was the creator and composer of the soundtrack, and the songs featured guest appearances by Kayah and Bregović, Ralph Kaminski, Laboratorium Pieśni and many others. For the painterly animation directed by DK Welchman and Hugh Welchman, based on the prose of Władyslaw Reymont, Rostkowski composed ethereal, folky, emotional music. In interviews, he mentioned that writing music for films had long been his dream, hence the formation of the Rebel Babel Film Orchestra section, which to some extent was able to realize this merging of the worlds of music and film at various projects. Both the Welchmans' picture itself and its soundtrack were Polish candidates for an Oscar in 2023. The success is also evidenced by the numbers: the original motion picture soundtrack of The Peasants received platinum status in Poland, while the music video for the song ‘Jesień – Tańcuj’ had collected more than 9 million views on YouTube by the end of February 2024.

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L.U.C. & RB Film Orchestra ft. Kayah, Dagadana, Laboratorium Pieśni, Tęgie Chłopy - Jesień - Tańcuj

Awards

Rostkowski was twice nominated for the Fryderyk Award, in the hip-hop/R&B album of the year category for the album Neurofotoreceptoreplotyka in 2005 and for the album Homoxymoronomatura in 2009. He has received the Wrocław Music Award (2009), a Polityka Passport award in the music category (2010) ‘for innovative combining of fields and genres’ and the Lubuskie Media Award Ale Sztuka! (2010). In 2010, he was nominated, and in 2013, together with the Motion Trio, he won the Third Program's Music Award – ‘Mateusz’ in the popular music-event category for the albums Nic Się Nie Stało and City of Harmony.