Quiet Luke

Quiet Luke is an alias of American musician and artist A. L. Bahta.

Early life
Bahta was born in Broward County, in a suburb north of Miami, Florida. His mother enrolled him in piano lessons when he was around five years old. He cites his experiences in choir and his immersion in the craft of beat-making in his teen years as influential to his musical direction. He chose the nom de plume Quiet Luke around the age of 16 as he was gaining interest in miming. He has said that he chose the name because he "loved how it looked on paper," and that it's "extremely pretentious."

Career
He moved to New York City in 2013 to study music production under Nick Sansano and Bob Power at The Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music from which he graduated in 2017.

Bahta premiered his debut single "Where U Were" with The Fader on July 12, 2016 via Mermaid Avenue, an imprint of Mom + Pop Music. He released his debut EP, Beholden, on October 21, 2016. Crack Magazine described the EP as the "intersection of far-reaching pop sensibilities and triumphant choral majesty."

In 2017 he studied abroad in Berlin, where he was introduced to AI and blockchain in a class taught by Mat Dryhurst. He became interested in krautrock as well as electronic music, immersing himself in the club scene of the city. He released a single "I Wanna Go" and a subsequent EP, Your Happy Place, in the fall of 2017.

He released the single "Something to Lose," on August 13, 2019 along with a cinematic music video. After a series of singles, visuals, and live performances throughout the fall, he released his debut album, 21st Century Blue, on December 4, 2019. The album is an audio-visual time capsule of his adolescence and an experimental rock epic with nods to plunderphonics and hypnagogic pop. He told Document Journal that Picasso's Blue Period, Hamlet and Blade Runner 2049 were among the inspirations for the work. The listening party for the album featured a large bust of the artist carved from a block of ice. He played a show at Dartmouth College on January 31, 2020 where a limited edition hoodie was sold with text that referenced the famous opening line of A Tale of Two Cities: "it was the beginning of times, it was the end of times."

The COVID-19 pandemic marked a significant gap in Bahta's public output as a musician. In a 2022 interview, he expressed that "he doesn’t think the medium [he] would best be able to express [himself] in has been invented yet," and he noted that he had been doing scoring work for fashion brands. In April 2023 he released an A-A side single "K0D / 43VR," with visuals filmed in "epic liminal spaces," such as Times Square, the American Dream Meadowlands, and the Oculus, referring to them as "capitalist cathedrals."

In 2023, he founded Club Chess, a conceptual social club, spatial design praxis, and weekly event series "somewhere between performance art, a salon and an experimental party space." It fuses downtown culture, audiophile culture, and chess in an attempt "to dismantle the game’s austerity." Being neither a real chess club nor tied to a brick and mortar, Club Chess is described as "a conductive material, or the keystone for a social sculpture," and Bahta has referred to it as "physical pirate radio." Chess is played "ambiently" at the parties in a style that can be likened to a contemporary form of Romantic chess.

Style and influences
He has cited Michael Jackson, Antonio Vivaldi, Jimi Hendrix and Sade as formative musical influences." He has also cited Timbaland and the Dada art movement of the early 20th century as influences. The sound of his debut album has been described as "revisionist Motown mixed with Abbey Road." He has noted "architectural attention to form" and "understanding humanity in this time of 'data'" as central questions in his practice. Much of his work is in conversation with historical thinking.

Discography
Studio albums
 * 21st Century Blue (2019)

Extended plays
 * Beholden (2016)
 * Your Happy Place (2017)
 * "K0D / 43VR" (2023)