Artist: Luke Striker
Title: Title
Released: 4th September 2014
Genre(s): Electronica, PBR&B, Pop Soul, Sophisti-Pop, Trip Hop
Length: 39:29
Writer(s): S.Donaghy, P.Hutton, D.Khan, J.Rockstar, L.Striker
Producer(s): Deneil, Luke Striker, Make A Scene
Executive Producer: Luke Striker
Format(s): CD [Digipack Only], Digital Download, Vinyl (Regular or White Vinyl)
Label: Third Strike

"Title" is the long-awaited debut album from American singer-songwriter and now producer, Luke Striker. The album was released on September 4th 2014 through his own imprint, Third Strike Records and distributed via Absolute Marketing & Distribution. The record comes over three years since Luke made his debut with his first single, "Sorry Again". During the time of his initial launch, Luke was on his way to becoming the next teen heartthrob. He has the looks, the body and the talent to make any girl a little hot under the collar but things didn't go as planned for Luke and his career. Where dominating male forces within the industry stand today such as Weekend, Hayden, Austin Nimmo, Kato and Dominic Brown is exactly where Luke would be right now if things did not take an unexpected drastic turn.

Luke carved out a unique, rock influenced sound for himself and quickly began to light up the charts with hits such as "Your Conflicted Heart" which featured Jennifer Armstrong, "Come Back Home Someday", "Don't Walk Away", "On My Own" featuring a then relatively unknown Deneil and "Best That I Can Be" while bagging himself a few number ones along the way. With a collection of hits under his belt, many grew suspicious when the release date of his debut album, titled "Overload", was constantly being delayed. For an act that started out in 2011, the "promised" release date of February 2013 was a relief for both Striker and his loving fans. February arrived. Nothing. For weeks, Striker remained out of the public eye and when he finally reared his head he had a LOT to say. Luke ended his relationship with Mercedes Payne over the social media giant, Twitter, for the entire world to see. He then went on to express his distaste towards the majority of his album and that he was having issues with his label, Studio60. The uncharacteristic snappy behaviour lead many to believe that Luke was in some sort of suffering or in a very unfit state of mind.

After over a year out of the public eye, Luke silently released "Overload" as an EP instead of a full length album. It contained all of his singles in one disc alongside an extra track, "Demons In Your Heart". Due to no promotion whatsoever and only being available to purchase through select online retailers, the EP failed to chart almost everywhere. The highest position the EP managed to scraped was a measly #89 in Germany, where Striker has a lot of dedicated fans. Following the poor sales of the EP and showing no interest in re-entering the music world, Luke was dropped from Studio60 and hasn't been heard from until today.

Luke has been silently working on his debut studio album since May 2014, keeping everything low-key and making sure everything is going to plan. Luke has since launched his own label, Third Strike Records, which only he is signed to at the moment. Going down the independent route was admittedly the best option for Luke as he has found himself disagreeing with decisions made by labels in the past and endured many horrific personal experiences during his time in the spotlight. Now, Luke is taking everything in his stride and doing it his own way this time around. With no big budget, marketing campaign or powerful label behind him, Luke Striker may never return to the top of the charts. In fact, he may never return to the charts at all but one thing is for sure - he's finally happy and being the artist he wants to be.

"Title" breaks away from the alternative/soft rock sound that Striker was once famous for and sees him take on a more electronica/PBR&B influenced sound which has grown popular over the last year. Apart from the cover song on the record, all songs were written by Luke with co-writing credits from Deneil Khan on two of them. Production also comes from Khan, English duo Make A Scene as well as Striker himself.

"I've been away for a long time and many people wondered where the hell I went and what was going on behind closed doors. I can see why they were worried and why alarm bells were ringing. I used to be a very successful act; at all the events, travelling the world and topping the charts. It was great for a while but things were starting to sour and I was never one to broadcast my business in public so I kept things to myself which probably didn't help situations to be honest. I was gearing up to release my album. It was over two and a half years in the making and by the time it came around to releasing it, I had grown tired of the material and was mentally tired too. I had lots of successful singles, a big string of them so I was off promoting them and barely having any time to myself...and that was before touring and promoting an album! I was a little burned out and I just could face more pressures. I was also in a relationship at the time and the stress I was going through had a negative impact on us. Eventually I turned to alcohol which wasn't the smartest move but at the time, it helped. Then...then when that no longer numbed me, I turned to drugs. I don't want to delve into too much detail, I'll let the songs on the album tell the stories. That's why it was important for me to take my time, do it my own way and get this record out their to the public. It's to tell them exactly what I've been up to over the last two years. It's everything I've felt, thought and experienced plus it's also a reflection of who I am as an artist now. I found a sound for me that just clicked and it might not be what people were expecting or are wanting to here...it might not even dent the charts but I'm fine with all of that. This record is very personal and I don't expect everyone to get it or even listen to it since I'm practically "irrelevant" now. To all the people who do check it out and continue (or begin to) support me then thank you. This has been a long time coming."


Peripheral Vision
Sting
Man Left With Nothing
We Just Go On
Something
Better Things
Raise A Glass
Coming Up For Air
Untitled
Trouble In Paradise

STING


Length: 3:29
Genre: Pop Soul, Sophisti-Pop
Written By: D.Khan, L.Striker
Produced By: Deneil
From The Album: Title

"Next up on the album we have one of my favourite tracks. This one is called "Sting". I worked on it with the wonderful Deneil Khan and I'll talk about my experience with him in a little bit. This was one of the last songs that I hard worked on on the record. The song has a lot of metaphors running throughout it, the main one being that I don't want to be 'stung' by the bee. It means that I don't want to feel the wrath of the girl. I don't seem to paint a very good picture of myself throughout this record but it's all from real experiences so I can't sugarcoat things. Anyway, the song is about letting go and feeling good about yourself but not taking others into consideration. Very selfish in a sense. You want to go out and have fun but don't think of the effect it has on others or the consequences. I'm going to hold my hands up and say that this song is about me hooking up with a girl a few times, not thinking about how she may have seen things differently and then running off because I got scared. You need to think about how other perceive you and these types of situations. I was just looking for some fun. She thought we were going to become something serious and was enraged when she found out we were nothing more than a little fool around every so often. It was a sucky thing to do but I learned from it.

I wanted to write a song about this experience but couldn't quite put it down on paper. I didn't want to say "and I slept with a girl and she called me this and was angry, blah, blah, blah." I wanted something a little more than that. I brought Deneil in to work with me. He is a very good friend of mine and he's super talented. I love the way he works and I wanted this to be an intimate personal record so I only brought in a few select people I felt comfortable working with. I told him about the situation and song idea then he flipped through his massive catalogue of song lyrics and whipped out the chorus. It fit perfectly. From there I worked on the verses.

The overall sound is that signature Deneil one. It's very laid back and somehow manages to draw enough attention to the beat without taking away from the voice and lyrics themselves. I love working with him, he just has the magic touch and really deserves to be where he is today. In fact he should be even bigger but the lazy ass rarely leaves his basement. I had to fly over to London to get him on the track. It's weird how his first ever release was as a guest rapper on one of my older singles and now he's the go-to producer right now and producing one of my own tracks."




Can Be Compared To;

WE JUST GO ON


Length: 4:06
Genre: Electronica
Written By: L.Striker
Produced By: Luke Striker
From The Album: Title

"Next up we have "We Just Go On". I'd say that this is one of the most "explosive(?)" tracks on the album due to its lyrical content and the fact that production wise, it's one of the most uptempo songs included on the record. The lyrics explicitly talk about a very....I wouldn't say "violent", more like a volatile relationship between a man and a woman. They're both stubborn as hell, hate to lose arguments and always try to get the better of each other but they love each other to pieces. They are based on a couple I met when I was getting myself cleaned up after my dark time. The guy was a former addict and we had connections through a rehab facility. He's such a big, lively character and then he introduced me to his fiancee who was even livelier. This little 4'11 girl could pack a punch. Literally. I still keep in contact with them and they aren't always like the way they're depicted in the song. That's an extreme, exaggerated version but you get the gist of it. No matter what is said, they both know that they can be hotheaded and say things they don't mean so they'll always soldier on and just get on with things."




Can Be Compared To;

BETTER THINGS


Length: 3:30
Genre(s): Electronica
Written By: L.Striker
Produced By: Make A Scene
From The Album: Title

"Next up on the album we have one of the more personal songs of the record which is "Better Things". I wrote this song at the tail end of the creative process of the album. It was like 3 am and the idea just came into my head so I put pen to paper. It only took me ten minutes to write so lyrically, it's rather simple and I didn't spend much time on cutting and carving it into something catchy or thinking about clever metaphors to turn it into something fancy. It's just raw thoughts put down onto a sheet. Throughout the making of this record I've always had an idea of what the songs will sound like production and melody wise when I was writing them but with this one I just let the words spill out with no idea of how to turn it into something to sing along too. At first I thought that the only way to do it would be acoustically but since I didn't want to throw in a random acoustic track in a very electronica/left field sounding album I called up Gwen and Adrian again and they worked their magic.

It has a very minimal approach to it and sounds almost eerie. There's a great sense of loneliness in the vocal deliver, which by the way has been mistaking for that of Riley Hamilton...I'll take that compliment, thank you very much! But yeah as I was saying, there's a feeling of being isolated to it and I like to think of "Better Things" as the answer to "Peripheral Vision" both sonically and lyrically. It has that sad undercurrent running throughout the production exactly like the opening track on the album but the lyrics are the total opposite.

On "Peripheral Vision" it's sort of me feeling sorry for myself but on "Better Things" it's me looking back to how I was and seeing how pathetic I really was. Thinking of myself at that time I just want to go back and give myself a shake and say, "Get up and stop dwelling on things. Nobody is going to wave a magic wand and make it all better. Only you can save yourself if you really want to. Worse things are happening in the world so stop feeling like the victim. Get over yourself." Thankfully I did get over myself and it is true. I was so caught up in everything I didn't even step back and put it into perspective. I was crying and ruining myself because I lost a record deal. On the other side of the globe, people are crying themselves to sleep because they have nowhere to go and nothing to eat or drink. It's a little exaggerated and I may sound as if I'm being a little too harsh on myself but at the end of the day, I still had a roof over my head, money and warm clothes and food. I just had to get over myself."


So you've let go of the one girl you truly loved
You shot yourself right in the foot and now you want to give up
Crying for endless days and nights over how things have turned out
Hitting the bottom of another bottle, stubbing out yet another doubt

So you took everything that you ever had for granted
Your girl, your career and friends, lost them all single-handed
Beating yourself up, looking for sympathy in anyone nearby
So you're a little down and thinking that you deserve to die

The world doesn't stop turning for you
You're just a tiny little dot, so insignificant
Just wipe your eyes and get on with it
You're just down on luck, hardly a big incident

Why are you crying? Pick yourself up off of the floor
This is just a regular day in your life, it's nothing that hasn't happened before
Hold your head up high, fix your hair and adjust your collar
Things could be a whole lot worse for you, like begging for a scrawny dollar
Hasn't God got better things to do with his time than listen to someone like you?
It's time to get over yourself and stop sitting in the blues

So you have fallen right into the wrong crowd
You should have seen all the warning signs, get yourself back out
So you say that they have got you hooked, dependent
I'm sure that nobody force fed you so don't just blame them

The world doesn't stop turning for you
You're just a tiny little dot, so insignificant
Just wipe your eyes and get on with it
You're just down on luck, hardly a big incident

Why are you crying? Pick yourself up off of the floor
This is just a regular day in your life, it's nothing that hasn't happened before
Hold your head up high, fix your hair and adjust your collar
Things could be a whole lot worse for you, like begging for a scrawny dollar
Hasn't God got better things to do with his time than listen to someone like you?
It's time to get over yourself and stop sitting in the blues

Why are you crying? Pick yourself up off of the floor
This is just a regular day in your life, it's nothing that hasn't happened before
Hold your head up high, fix your hair and adjust your collar
Things could be a whole lot worse for you, like begging for a scrawny dollar
Hasn't God got better things to do with his time than listen to someone like you?
It's time to get over yourself and stop sitting in the blues

I know it's hard but keep your chin up, you'll get there
You're feeling down and out but hey, life is never fair
There's bigger issues going on and your life is one big yawn
If you really want to change then just do it, do it
If you really want to change then just prove it, prove it

Why are you crying? Pick yourself up off of the floor
This is just a regular day in your life, it's nothing that hasn't happened before
Hold your head up high, fix your hair and adjust your collar
Things could be a whole lot worse for you, like begging for a scrawny dollar
Hasn't God got better things to do with his time than listen to someone like you?
It's time to get over yourself and stop sitting in the blues

Why are you crying? Pick yourself up off of the floor
This is just a regular day in your life, it's nothing that hasn't happened before
Hold your head up high, fix your hair and adjust your collar
Things could be a whole lot worse for you, like begging for a scrawny dollar
Hasn't God got better things to do with his time than listen to someone like you?
It's time to get over yourself and stop sitting in the blues

Can Be Compared To;

COMING UP FOR AIR


Length: 4:18
Genre(s): Electronica, PBR&B
Written By: S.Donaghy, P.Hutton, J.Rockstar
Produced By: Deneil
From The Album: Title

"This track is the one and only cover on the album. It's probably the only cover I will ever do since I'm not really a fan of them but this song just needed to be on the record. This song is "Coming Up For Air". It was originally performed by a beautiful redheaded songstress called Siobhan Donaghy. Being from the US, I didn't know much about her and wasn't exposed to her tremendous talents until I stumbled upon her on Twitter. She used to be in a girl band called Sugababes but left in 2001, went solo then came back with the original members of the band....although now they're called MKS. Stupid music politics. Anyway, this track was on her second and last studio album, "Ghosts", and the record and this track just touched me. I was in awe of how simple it all was yet the power it held within the words. It is a very defiant song and since the song is rather broad, the lyrics can apply to a range of topics and emotions. I listened to it when I was starting to head into recovery and think about picking my life up again and for me, this song is about wriggling out from underneath that giant boot and finally realising that if I want to make it....if I want to survive, then I've got to act fast and do it myself.

This is the third and last song that was produced by Deneil. The original version had a slightly more pop feel to it, quite polished and with a slightly upbeat sound to it. That version was produced by Marius de Vries who likes to put the odd bell and whistle into tracks to give them a slightly more commercial, accessible vibe. The Deneil version is more stripped back, very ethereal sounding and has an overall darker tone to it. Like I said, covers are not usually my thing but this song said many things that I wanted to and it's also a nod to Miss Donaghy's talents."

Is this a question of time?
Is this a question of space?
I've been out of my mind
I'm coming up for air
To work it out

If you throw me a line
Then I'll try to replace
All the things I can't find
'Cause I'm coming up for air
To let it out

Defection from the state I'm in
Reflections of a world within

Back with myself again
All my fears
Just like a ball and chain
And I know
Although I am alone
I'm at home
Here with my selfish pain

It's not a question of faith
It's not a question of hope
I'm getting out of this place
I'm coming up for air
To work it out

Defection from the state I'm in
Reflections of a world within

I'm feeling colder now
A little bolder now
Pure as my sins allow
Broke every promise and proud


Can Be Compared To;

TROUBLE IN PARADISE


Length: 4:06
Genre(s): Electronica, New Wave, Pop Rock
Written By: L.Striker
Produced By: Make A Scene
From The Album: Title

"Now we finally come to the last song on the record. Last but definitely far from least. "Trouble In Paradise" is probably my favorite track that I've ever done. Everything from the lyrics, to the production, vocal delivery, even the feelings I experienced when writing and recording the track...it just felt right and everything came so naturally. It was also the first song that had actually been written in one full go and I felt a sense of accomplishment. When I first started to pen this new album it was a very slow burning process to be honest. It would take me weeks to write one song. I'd maybe get a verse out in one sitting if I was lucky. That was back when I was forcing myself to make a new record and get back to what I know. I still had my doubts and wasn't 100% back to myself but the idea of this track came to me one day and whoosh, I was back in business. I managed to right it all out in one go, it flowed so naturally and it's the track I am most proud of. You can say that this song is my "baby"!

The lyrics tell the story of how I first fell into drugs and then experimented with more. I met a lot of people who I thought were offering to help me and at one point I thought this crowd were amazing. I felt like they were there for me but really, they were just taking advantage and ruining me. When I first got acquainted with them all, it was just some light stuff to start off with. They spurred me on and made me feel good about myself. It was ecstasy to begin with and apparently I was a hoot when I took them. I felt needed and loved. I was life and soul of the party. Then as time went on it moved to heavier stuff. Cocaine was the main one. They were all doing it and I was promised a taste of paradise. It all seemed like fun and games and for a while, it was. Then I just became wrecked and it's not what I wanted or ever seen myself becoming. I guess I was extremely naive. It started out as some entertainment with friends and as a way of looking cool, I guess. Next thing I know, I'm shaking and in tears because I can't function without it. The chorus is about me realising the mess I'm in but feeling like I can't do anything about it because there is nobody around to help and it's such a hard habit to kick. I refer to the addiction as a black hole. You don't want to go near it, it's a terrible thing but you unwillingly find yourself being drawn back in.

Production comes from Make A Scene yet again. This was one of the earliest tracks that I had written and my favorite by far so I was keeping it by for the right producer to come along. After hitting it off in our first session, I presented them with his song and then sang them a rough acapella version. I always new that despite the dark lyrics, I wanted this track to have an upbeat feel. I wanted a sense of "fun" and something that makes you feel like you're living up in paradise. The cheery, enjoyable rhythm purposely contradicts the serious lyrics because the entire song is about things being different to the reality. I thought I was solving all my problems and living a great life but really I was only exacerbating things and working myself closer to my grave. It really tells the beginning of my story well and I'd say that it's one of the strongest on the album so I thought it would be a great way to close it."



Can Be Compared To;