Singer-songwriter, composer, and producer Autumn Luz has spent much of her life longing for the opportunity to pursue music in a serious way. As a child, she begged for piano lessons, but her family couldn’t afford them. During arts high school and college, she taught herself piano on gorgeous, in-tune Steinway pianos she found hidden in practice rooms. Today, the Philly-based solo artist boldly steps outside of music room nooks with the single, Speed.
“As with a lot of people, the pandemic became a time when I started to connect with what really mattered to me, and to make room for that in my life,” Autumn says. “It’s been a long journey to get here. I’m not sure what felt scarier, thinking about what people would say, or facing the topics and lyrics I put in my songs. In the beginning, I whispered them because I wasn’t ready to say these things out loud. Now, I am not afraid of being the woman I am.”
Autumn has been a welfare kid, a prep school kid, a University of Chicago dropout, a complex trauma survivor, a ballet director, an MBA grad, and a data tech leader, all while managing a genetic medical condition. Today, she is a focused artist with a well-developed signature aesthetic that embraces hues of blues, jazz, and alt-rock. Her songs glower with the passion of working through inner conflicts and contradictions, and the search for truths and wholeness. “What attracts me in music is raw authenticity. I am not afraid to explore dark places. That’s the only thing I hope to follow: the courage to be passionately authentic,” she says. With her on these revealing musical explorations are genre-busting multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, and arranger Samwe, and composer, pianist, and guitarist Sarun Charumilind.
The eerily ambient single, Speed, exudes a pent-up urgency with its dynamic textural overlay of chiming guitars, backwards recorded guitar atmospherics, its minor-key tonal sensibility, and its ominous rhythms. The unique melodic vocal variation weaving in and out throughout the track is due to Autumn’s wild inner musical dialogue. “It is typical of my creative laziness and indecision when it comes to melodies and lyrics: I have a tendency to just keep all the ideas and use them as harmonies,” she admits.
Autumn sings with a delicate flutter observational lyrics about her daily contradictions. The song’s opening lyrics set the thematic tone: I have a car but I don’t really drive/What’s wrong with you girl, you got something to hide?/I can’t explain myself to you — I could never/All my stuff is by the wayside. She explains: “‘Speed’ is about the absurdity and frustrations of getting impatient and then getting ahead of oneself. It describes the intensity of those bewildering complexities and the overwhelm that can result.”
The track was brought to life by an international remote recordings quest. Independent rock and electronic musician AfterAudio enabled Autumn to realize her full-on alt-rock vision for the track. The bulk of the instruments and arrangements were done by Samwe in Bogotá, Colombia; New Jersey-based musician/writer David Joseph (avid.oseph) played the drums; and the vocals were recorded at the legendary Milkboy Studios (Lana Del Rey, Justin Timberlake, Miley Cyrus) by Grammy-winning engineer, Sam Rosen (H.E.R., Diandra Ailene, Jazmine Sullivan) who also mixed the track. Grammy-nominated engineer Ryan Schwabe (Baauer, Pussy Riot, Cochise) put his golden finishing touch mastering Speed.
