You’ll love this. You might be familiar with it already, but I’d be surprised. It’s not new, it’s not that old either, and the chances are that if you missed it when it first peeked out from behind 2021’s curtain of noise (100,000 Spotify uploads a day and rising) then it’ll have completely passed you by.
It’s called Duty Of Care by the impressively posh-sounding David Luximon-Herbert. Dropping the second half of his double barrelled surname has done little to shoot David’s name into the collective conscience of the music listening public…and that’s a real pity.
Crashing waves cede to crashing chords. Orchestral strings fight for ear space with cacophonous timpani. An earwormy woo-oo-ooh vocal centres the attention, fuzz guitar climbs the frets…then the drop out. The vocal comes in. Something about arrival and survival. More woo-oo-oohs and then a lovely spoken word section, Luximon’s properly Scottish burr well to the fore. “It’s not a manifesto or a benediction,” he goes, and, in a wave of bah-bah-bahs, the guitar takes us skywards again. The track rises and falls for five spellbinding, world-stopping minutes and you find yourself diving back in, time and time again, to bathe in its golden magic.
Luximon clearly put this all together with meticulous care, the way you or I might if we’ve a head full of radical ideas and been offered only one recording session in our entire lives in which to capture it. Duty Of Care is lush, full and perfectly realised, in the same way McAlmont & Butler’s Yes and Pet Shop Boys/Dusty Springfield’s What Have I Done To Deserve This? are lush, full and perfectly realised.
It’s no fluke.
Duty Of Care‘s parent album ebbs and flows beautifully, a wholly (holy) realised amalgam of fantastic orchestration melded to stinging electric guitars, rippling jazz piano and terrifically skittering and booming Axelrod-ish drums. Shimmering Hammond gives way to proggy synths, which drop out to allow slide guitar solos to wheeze themselves out into the thin air. Tremelo-heavy tracks weave their way into one another, no beginnings and no endings. Was that some bird song appearing in the gap there? Burbling water between the finger scrapes on acoustic strings? It’s so all that, this record.
The album in full is stunning. Part Virgin Prunes, part pastoral folk, totally immersive, Duty Of Care‘s tracklist reads like the titles of projected Coen Brothers’ films still to be made; Nothing Ever Good Happened Down By The River, The Town That Dreaded Sundown, Datsun Cherry. It’s super-produced by Olly Betts, long-time drummer in melodic noise-smiths The Duke Spirit and requires a proper listening session. No telly on in the background. No inane social media scrolling. No household chores while it spins. Just you, an armchair and a receptive pair of ears. Play it once and you’ll find yourself returning to it daily until you’re familiar with every nook and cranny of its perfectly nuanced sound. I think you’ll like it. A lot.
Listening to Luximon may well have you reassessing the boundaries of what good music actually is. This is great – like What’s Going On and Pet Sounds levels of great. How many other artists amongst those 100,000 other noise makers are making music as considered and vital as this? We’ll never know.
David Luximon‘s Duty Of Care is easily one of the finest records to grace the Last Night From Glasgow imprint. You can buy it here.
Bonus Track
There’s also a pretty great Max Harris Project/Ashley Lockdown remix of Care Of Duty out there. Track 2 above, it features added helicopter noises, stripped back Orb-y ambience and, quite possibly, the quiet sound of Richard Ashcroft weeping at where it all went wrong. Ol’ twiggy Ricky, he of the Axelrod pretensions and delusions of grandeur, would quite gladly forego his comfy Oasis support slots for an ounce of Luximon’s skill and gravitas. A bittersweet symphony indeed.
The remix was released as a ‘pay-what-you-want’ single, all proceeds going to Age UK/Age Scotland during the Covid crisis. Remember that?
Plain Or Pan 