"when we see clearer how clearly will we see?"
When alt-folk artist Luke De-Sciscio sings it feels less like an emotional artist expressing his art than his art inhibiting his body and soul and that art coming out, shining like a human beacon of light. De-Sciscio's sonic poetry deals in the human connections with nature and beyond. Often times his recordings are just that, himself with his trusted guitar letting what is inside of him out. Sometimes not even sparse production but, instead, a live embryonic performance naked and bare. Voice (his instrument), guitar (his instrument) and natural ambience (earth's instrument). Don't be mistaken though, De-Sciscio's songs aren't lovey dovey hippie fair that looks at the world through pollyanna glasses. His songs do deal in pain and the human struggle but oftentimes (to me) the focus is the understanding on how the human spirit flows, hopefully strong and with love, like a river around sharp destructive rocks and dead trees.
"Stillness Beneath All Things" bubbles with pain and De-Sciscio asks questions about how we perceive things on a grander scale, "when we all see clearly / how clearly will we see? / the year is 2020 / just looks like time to me / when you're moving in a dream / how does love proceed?" and further down his lyrical road, "Once you realize that your dreaming / the pen that drives the world / it starts to look like / stillness beneath all things" at which time De-Sciscio let's out an extended breath that feels like a meditative cleansing breath. The song gets more turbulent though "you know you are dreaming / world spins from your pen / what will you make of my world but a kingdom of....". At this point I felt "hell" coming from his lips but De-Sciscio says "heaven" instead, "What will you make of my world but a kingdom of heaven". It is a surprising tell and there are other lyrics that reflect our decisions to let the positive and life affirming inside.
In the end the song rages like a storm, "fear can't be brave / the fear can't be brave" in rushed cadence and a vocal aesthetic that battles with the utter horribleness there is in the world because as humans we are flawed but De-Scissio might be asking us not to absorb all that crap that scrolls across our phones. We are after all what we consume as De-Scissio sings "I have eyes let the light in".
"Stillness Beneath All Things" ends with a breath that feels like one of exasperation more than meditative but one of self reflection and understanding. The song is from De-Scissio's 2020 album "Sublime". It is a totally appropriate name as a descriptor. I am floating in it's beauty and hope you will too.
-Robb Donker Curtius
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Luke ‘the Folk Boy’ De-Sciscio is a UK singer-songwriter whose music sounds like it was transported from a different era of song-writing.
Philosophical, witty and unremittingly honest - Luke's songs ruminate with a prophetic abundance that eludes to a value beyond the musical.
Eschewing the fervent journalism that belies his peers, Luke, draws from lyricism that tends less to the political and more to the communal human spirit.
Sonically intimate, with respect to the tradition of English folk music, his songs are at once grounded in the Earth and simultaneously spanning the ethereal chasm.
In 2020, Luke De-Sciscio released a season of three records; Good Bye Folk Boy, Eucharist and Sublime, the 33 tracks of which mark a voyage from the depths of chaos to the enlightening vantage of love.
The success of this body of work propelled Luke to the international stage and solidified his claim amongst the pantheon of great British folk singers.
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