RIP Swirl

What does it mean to be perfectly blue? Perhaps it means swimming contently in the waters of deep, complex emotions, or simply learning to spin low moments into casual days. For Luka Seifert, who makes music as RIP Swirl, the idea of being fine with not being happy all the time was the catalyst for his second album, Perfectly Blue. The two words captured something: learning to embrace being blue, while using music as a way of processing emotions. 

At the same time, Luka is not one for over-conceptualising. He prefers to get lost in the flow of the moment, immersing himself in his playground of musical instruments. He doesn’t prescribe specific stories or meaning to his songs. He instead creates an atmosphere, a canvas, that is adaptable to the condition of each listener. 

On his 2022 debut album, Blurry, Luka introduced listeners to his malleable world with the clearest realisation yet of the signature RIP Swirl sound — a sound not categorisable by genre or instrument, but a sound defined by feeling, a combination of shoegaze, electronica and rock, of production, voice and guitar. This feeling has found fans among everyone from Gen Z rave kids to armchair techno fans and generated considerable acclaim in the music blogosphere. Luka’s followup Perfectly Blue continues his winding, unpredictable journey from bedroom producer to guitarist, singer, songwriter and beyond. 

Born and raised in Hamburg, Luka started playing piano at age six. But it wasn’t until he was twelve, when he picked up the guitar, that he found himself diving headlong into music, so much so that he felt compelled to start writing his own. He spent his adolescence playing in bands, starting with metal and then later mellowing out into indie rock. 

The broad spectrum of genre and medium covered by his taste has cast Luka in various musical roles over the years. He has scored soundtracks for short movies and fashion shows, worked with various bands, and released tracks on labels such as Live From Earth, Wedidit, and Lobster Theremin. His first project with his current label home Public Possession was 9TEEN90, a selection of moody leftfield electronic tracks. He went on to release a second EP, Hope You Are Well, in 2020, which saw Luka incorporating more guitar into his sound. 

Blurry was Luka’s ultimate return to his roots and his childlike, intuitive relationship with music, a confluence of his work as a producer, DJ, and party curator in Berlin’s club scene with the textural quilt of his physical approach to recording. The album was met with critical acclaim from publications like Pitchfork and Office Magazine, creating a swell of interest in Luka as a producer. 

In 2023 RIP Swirl featured on YEAR0001’s RIFT Two compilation (listed among DJ Mag’s compilations of the year) with his song ‘Let’s Make Out.’ He has since became an exclusive collaborator to rising vocalists like Alias Error of a.s.o and Ariana Manmoon of untitled (halo). 

Perfectly Blue is a natural extension of Blurry, with Luka’s signature sound turned up to the extreme. There’s even more trip-hop, more shoegaze and more nostalgia, evoking notions of teen angst and nighttime drives in the suburbs. Kicked off by the title track and lead single, a heady collaboration with Brazilian-American singer Winter, the album continues Luka’s foray into the murky territory between My Bloody Valentine, Aphex Twin and his own wild imagination. Luka never felt like there was a single concept behind the album.

“For me it’s really nice to leave it a bit more open and have people take this music and find something in their life that it relates to,” he says. “It maybe also has something to do with the fact that I am zero spiritual or religious, so from a young age so I was always sort of looking for some other meaning. And I’ve found that in music. If you wanted to push it further, you could say if I hadn’t made this music I might still be pretty lost. But maybe let’s not make this too heavy…”

During the album writing process, Luka was pleasantly surprised to find that, whereas on Blurry he had reached out to potential collaborators himself, this time other artists were contacting him. Among those who got in touch were Untitled Halo and Alias Error, who feature on Perfectly Blue’s next singles ‘Negative Fantasy’ and ‘Found You Out’, respectively. Meanwhile Bay Area iconoclast Tanukichan, who features on the dreamy ‘Call Me’, has said that Blurry is among her favourite albums.

Luka gave no direction to any of his vocalists, instead simply asking them for a take and running with whatever happened, true to his instinctive methods of recording. He recorded everything himself — every instrument, all the production, all the mixing — at home, often turning songs around in as little as a day. He says he is “not a perfectionist” and limits himself to only using the hardware he has at his house. 

While his sound remains hard to categorise, spontaneity is what defines the RIP Swirl process. “If you can exactly imagine it in your head then there’s no way it will surprise you,” he says.