With the debate on Real vs Fake “DJ’s” only intensifying day by day, every artist has come under the scanner, and very few have passed with flying colours – Our AOTM for November happens to be one of them.
He started his career as a graffiti artist, and is also an international kung fu athlete, you guessed it right, Lucas “Laidback Luke” Cornelis van Scheppingen is our Artist Of The Month for November 2015.
The Dutch-Filipino producer and DJ, who happens to be married to another DJ – Gina Turner, and has a side project called Nouveau Yorican, with her, is one of the most versatile artists we have on the scene today. He is also known for encouraging various music styles and personally grooming a lot of young and upcoming DJ’s, be it Blasterjaxx’s Thom and Idir who were signed to his Mixmash imprint, or Will Sparks with his Melbourne Bounce releases on Luke’s label.
Lucas has three studio albums to his name, Psyched Up (1998), Electronic Satisfaction (2002) and Cream Ibiza Super You & Me (2011), along with two mix albums called Windmill Skill and Ibiza Closing Party. He also has an upcoming studio album called ‘Focus’, due to release on November 6th.
Luke’s breakout track was ‘Rocking With The Best’, released in 2000, and recently remixed into a monster of a track by Tujamo. Luke has on number of occasions shown his ability to produce diverse tracks such as S.A.X with Tujamo, along with a track like Collide with Project 46. He has also produced some festival and club bangers such as Turbulence with Steve Aoki, Flashing Lights with D.O.D and the huge track MORE with the now numero uno DJ duo Dimitri Vegas and Like Mike. He’s also collaborated with well known pop artists such as Example, who created Natural Distaster with Luke.
Tracks like “Dynamo” with Hardwell, which received great remix treatment from Will Sparks, and the reworked Show Me Love with Steve Angello have only shown how talented Lucas is as a producer and his understanding of the dance music industry over time, and the ability to create sounds that are the flavour of the season and which appeal to the ever adaptive dance music community. Goes without saying that Get Dumb and Leave The World Behind will always be remembered as the songs which lead us to Swedish House Mafia, but they had Laidback Luke as a contributor as well.
His remixes have been no less impressive, with “You Used To Hold Me” and ‘Thinking About You” by Calvin Harris, “Cinema” by Benni Benassi, “Dirty Talk” by Wynter Gordon and “Crescendolls” by none other than Daft Punk along with tracks by Avicii, NAS, Tiesto, Martin Solveig, Black Eyed Peas, Depeche Mode, Zombie Nation, Jay-Z, Katy Perry, Chris Brown, GTA, Pitbull, Mariah Carey and Robin Thicke featuring on Luke’s remixes CV.
He has also won 23 Gold Medals as part of Team Holland at the Kung Fu World Championships held in China in 2013.
Here’s wishing Laidback Luke all the success for his upcoming studio album, and we’re sure there’s a lot more to come from him.
