Torn Hawk

The alias of producer and visual artist Luke Wyatt, Torn Hawk's music initially revolved around "video mulching" -- Wyatt's term for his style of video editing, which featured heavily processed collages that sampled sources ranging from VHS tapes of '80s teen and action films to pornography -- when he came to prominence in 2009, but he incorporated more original elements over the years. Professing a love of pop culture and cinema (his step-mother owned an independent movie theater in Charlotte, Virginia when he was growing up), his visual and musical output carries a degree of sincerity as well as immediacy.

Wyatt's music was first exposed to a wider audience with his Tarifa EP through <a href="spotify:artist:3l8tiiJagegHYKPqCdbnla">Ron Morelli</a>'s <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22L.I.E.S.%22">L.I.E.S.</a> white label series in 2012. That year, he was also commissioned by rare '80s boogie reissue label <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22Peoples+Potential+Unlimited%22">Peoples Potential Unlimited</a> to create a VHS promo compilation video of unseen '80s party and music footage on the release PPU Video Party, and produced videos for the likes of <a href="spotify:artist:0vGgiPJGe69ZTxWjae6vcH">Mock & Toof</a>, <a href="spotify:artist:2HNNSjjaK20NZ9PDZ2EMwU">I:Cube</a>, <a href="spotify:artist:0ESDdrwfAvy5AfTSTksBEH">Mi Ami</a>, and Ex-Vivian. Wyatt enjoyed a prolific 2013, with releases on labels such as <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22No+Pain+in+Pop%22">No Pain in Pop</a>, <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22Emotional+Response%22">Emotional Response</a> (under his Lossmaker guise), a couple of 12"s on <a href="spotify:artist:3l8tiiJagegHYKPqCdbnla">Morelli</a>'s main label, and his own Valcrond Video. In 2014, he released his first long-player (via download and a limited-edition cassette) called Through Force of Will on Amanda Brown's <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22Not+Not+Fun%22">Not Not Fun</a>, and he readied the white-label Quadrifolio for release later that year. That November, he returned with his <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22Mexican+Summer%22">Mexican Summer</a> debut, Let's Cry and Do Pushups at the Same Time, which featured a subtler approach. Following 12"s for Valcrond Video and <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22L.I.E.S.%22">L.I.E.S.</a>, Torn Hawk's next full-length appeared in May 2016. Inspired by the power of positive thinking, his move to Berlin, as well as 19th century Romanticism and the paintings of Karl Friedrich Schinkel and Caspar David Friedrich, Union and Return moved further from Wyatt's collagist roots in favor of carefully orchestrated, emotionally direct compositions.

The following year, Torn Hawk reworked tracks by <a href="spotify:artist:4lTYJ693x10unejOLxoCYr">Daze</a> and <a href="spotify:artist:2m5QcumD7TJlf7titmIDmP">Grey People</a>; his own releases included the EBM-influenced EPs Wormquest and Men With No Memory, as well as Hungry for Candy, a collaboration between Torn Hawk and <a href="spotify:artist:5nChWRbqHpDiwZcs4ZoKCV">Florian Kupfer</a>. Also in 2017, Wyatt issued the album Heretic, an emotive set using '90s electronica as a jumping off point under his own name, while the compilation I Like Movies About Old Books That Have Powers gathered previously unreleased Torn Hawk material from the first half of the 2010s. Wyatt returned to <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22L.I.E.S.%22">L.I.E.S.</a> for 2018's Time Is a Scam, a fusion of retro synth-scapes, dub, psych-rock, and doom; another compilation, Fragments So Far 2, appeared on Valcrond Video later in the year. In 2020, Wyatt incorporated vocals into Torn Hawk's music for the first time on Here Comes Language and offered another archival release with White Labels And Outtakes: 2011-2014. March 2022's evocatively named, darkly danceable set Ski Mask, Jolt Cola, Saturday Detention preceded that November's Toxic Sincerity, a collage of spoken word monologues and atmospheric tracks that Wyatt described as "advice pop." ~ Aneet Nijjar