Torn Hawk

Thursday, April 20th at 8pm, ISSUE is pleased to present new works from longtime friends Lili Schulder and Luke Wyatt, known through their far-reaching releases under the monikers 51717 and Torn Hawk, respectively. Despite each navigating singular pathways through underground electronic music, this presentation will feature new works expanding on and departing from their best known practices. The performances will take place at The Emily Harvey Foundation’s space in SoHo, Manhattan.

Over the past few years, Torn Hawk has made a progressive pivot from romantic, vulnerable instrumental music and video works toward an equally vulnerable word-focused spoken word practice. His regular personal updates and character studies on Instagram, his NTS residency radio show, and most recently his releases on Nina Protocol have served as developing grounds for this evolving work. For this presentation, Torn Hawk will debut “Trustfall,” a culminating outgrowth of his recent explorations that hybridize stream-of-consciousness spoken word, stand-up candor, and emotional sincerity through his voice only. Recently, Torn Hawk has released the album “Toxic Sincerity” co-released by Valcrond Video and new music label FLEA.  Taken from the maligned premise of toxic masculinity and featuring much of the iconography therein—leisure suits, Ramada hotels, and weightlifting programs—the album compellingly integrates Torn Hawk’s past and present music, combining a media haze of crystalline synths, brass swells, e-piano, and guitar with the exposed earnestness of his recent spoken word skits. 

51717 and Torn Hawk have recently been featured on the 400 Floor Podcast by Nina Protocol, hosted by Jack Callahan. The episode focuses on the artists' mutual experiences growing up on the East Coast in the ‘90s before eventually crossing paths in NYC in the mid ‘00s, their association with Ron Morelli's L.I.E.S. label, and more. 

Torn Hawk is the primary alias for Luke Wyatt, a sound and image artist who has released over 20 records on labels including L.I.E.S., Mexican Summer, Not Not Fun, Unknown To The Unknown, and his own label Valcrond Video. Luke first gained notice creating video works for other musical artists, and then his own music, and his visual mission continues to manifest in the many videos online and elsewhere that adhere to a form he calls “video mulch.” Making almost exclusively instrumental music before 2019, from the textural blown-out guitar works of his early LIES releases, to the glistening fake orchestral music of his second Mexican Summer record, Wyatt’s own spoken voice made its first significant appearance on “Here Comes Language” in 2020 and emerged with more aggressive focus on “Toxic Sincerity,” his most recent album. His ongoing NTS Radio residency serves as a development space for his deceptively radical vocalized works. Most recently, key contributions to Nina Protocol have allowed Wyatt to deliver his most evolved spoken word pieces to date.

Photo: Torn Hawk courtesy the artist