The Luyas are a band from Montreal, Quebec. They have been playing music together since 2006. What began as a collaboration between Jessie Stein, Pietro Amato, and Stefan Schneider shifted over the years to include Mathieu Charbonneau, Bucky Wheaton and Michael Feuerstack. Through many tours and personnel adjustments, no love has been lost between these friends. The band’s new album, Human Voicing is a leap of faith taken together by all 6 musicians.

Jessie’s unexpected turns and feely rhythms on guitar, bass and keys are much of what gives the music its particular character. Pietro forms the sonic and harmonic foundation with keyboard and horn tones that run the spectrum from warm and mysterious to dark and confusing. The double drum foundation of Bucky and Stef was key to the improvisations that generated the songs. Michael alternates between darting brush strokes and enveloping open guitar chords, providing a sense of spatial depth. All of these core elements, and the occasional otherworldly flourish of Mathieu’s modular synth, are brought into unlikely focus by Stein’s fauvist and fractured lyrical perspective – resulting in a unique psychedelia.

This odd collaboration has yielded a lot of truly magical and weird music. While the result can loosely be described as rock music, the band is spirited and impressionistic by nature – always making priorities of curiosity and inventiveness in order to make something soulful and surprising.

Human Voicing was made at Breakglass Studios with nothing but the loosest of outlines and a few skeletal sketches. Along with 2016’s Says You EP, the new album was produced and mixed by the inimitable Jace Lacek (Besnard Lakes). Together they mark the band’s first releases since 2012’s “Animator”.