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We’ve updated our Terms of Use. You can review the changes here.

Blues of the World

by Lucas/Heaven

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Stoner Jazz 04:21
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I am Loved 03:07
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about

Lucas Gorham has long been a fixture in the electronic music movement and beat scene community. As Heaven The Dude, he’s worked with Fat Tony and Dent May on the cheeky yet sincere ode to the direct deposit, “Waiting For A Check.” He teamed up with Tony for 10,000 Hours, giving the Houston MC a country-rap sound without it ever sounding gimmicky or forced. Slide guitar and sick bars have never sounded so good together. But sometime in the past few years, Gorham was moving further away from his personas as Heaven The Dude and HevIn, instead wanting to create something truer to the name he was born with. That album turned out to be Blues of the World, which Gorham is dropping under the name Lucas/Heaven. It’s an album of striking honesty, desperation, and optimism, blended into a sound that combines the urgent poetics of Gil Scott-Heron with the undeniable rhythms of jazz stars like Makaya McCraven. In short, it’s a triumph, built from Gorham’s decades-long journey to finding his most authentic self in music.

There’s a vulnerability to the album that helped convince Gorham to switch up identities and present this album as a thesis on his humanity, his POV. After the acid jazz palette cleanser of “Rhythm Parade” washes over the listener, Lucas moves to the title track, which uses a cumbia-inspired groove to highlight Lucas’ direct, gut-punch epitaph to life as it once was: “I didn’t think the world would end anytime soon/ Every morning I see the news, it reads like certain doom,” he sings, before concluding, “If I think about it too hard, I will probably lose my mind.” It’s bleak, but shit, the world’s a hard enough place to live when we’re not constantly being threatened by global collapse. This was the album Gorham needed to make, whether or not it goes down easily.

Luckily, though, Gorham’s staggering skill across a variety of instruments makes the medicine go down smooth throughout the entire album. “Every City Has A Rhythm” is a song about gentrification and outrageous rents disguised as a pop ballad that would make Stevie Wonder proud. “I Am Loved” is an enthralling jam inspired by Armenian Zurna music and a choir that practically forces you to sing along. Imagine William Onyeabor meets the epic stylings of Kamasi Washington. It’s a triumph. Throughout the album, Gorham, who spends his days working as a librarian in the Los Angeles school system, proves that there can be joy in hard reckonings, and that even the darkest of situations can be looked at with a touch of optimism.

There’s a theme of love that courses through the vein of Blues of the World, a passionate plea for self-love, love of others, and love for the planet. It’s an idea as old as time, sure, but Gorham infuses it with the urgency needed to unite a world against monumental problems we’ll need to tackle as one. “There’s so much fear and hopelessness, an air of nihilism that exists that makes people stand still or depressed,” he explains. “I get that, I feel it too. But if anything, I want people to realize that the solution is love, accepting love, accepting love from yourself, and accepting it from fellow human beings.” We don’t have a shortage of people willing to love, just a lack of vulnerability to cry out for one another, to stand tall and feel the one-of-a-kind nerves that come with sending love without the guarantee of it being returned. But that, according to Lucas/Heaven, is what it takes. As he suggests on the raucous, epic, life-affirming finale, “The Key Is Within You.” - Will Schube

credits

released April 15, 2022

Produced and written by Lucas Gorham
Recorded by Lucas Gorham, Steve Cristensen and Ryan Chavez
Mixed by Steve Cristensen
Mastered by Sarah Register
Cover Painting by Allegra Jones
Graphic Design by Derek Garcia

Guitars, Bass, Vocals: Lucas Gorham
Bass on Track 1: Dent May
Keyboards: Matt Grossman
Saxophone on tracks 1, 3-4, 6, and 9-10, Flute on track 8: Joe Santa Maria
Saxophone on track 2: Casey Butler
Flute on track 5: Sergio Flores
Percussion: Jose "Chapy" Luna
Bassoon on track 9: Cody Putnam
Background vocals: Kam Franklin and Danielle Henderson
Additional Production: Morris, TayDex

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Lucas/Heaven Houston, Texas

aka Heaven the Dude

from Houston, TX

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