I write about music, culture, labour, colonialism, drugs, and harm reduction for outlets around the world. Recently, I’ve been reporting on cryptocurrency and crypto-colonialism, AI, music labour struggles, and tenant organizing.
My work has been published by Popular Mechanics, GQ, Billboard, The Guardian, Pitchfork, The Daily Beast, Columbia Journalism Review, Premier Guitar, Vulture, The Walrus, MEL, Mic, CBC, Globe and Mail, Maclean’s, Toronto Star, and others.
You can check out my work for Premier Guitar here.
I’ve written more than 100 artist and label bios, across virtually all genres. Hit me up if you’d like to talk about having one written for your project.
I also did communications and fact-checking for the podcast series Race Against Climate Change by Canada’s National Observer.
I’ve served as a juror for the Digital Publishing Awards, and have served as a juror for the Polaris Music Prize since 2018. I was part of the 11-person grand jury for the 2024 prize.
You can follow me on Twitter: @lukeottenhof. You can contact me at ottenhofluke at gmail dot com. You can also check out my band Brickie.
Some Recent and Not-So-Recent Work
- The Black (Metal) Plague (CREEM)
- Musicians Take on SXSW (Capital and Main)
- The Groundbreaking Software That Helps Matthew Whitaker Produce Music (Popular Mechanics)
- "It's Like Dropping a Bomb on the Louvre:" The Remarkable Race to Save These Critical Languages Before They Die (Popular Mechanics)
- Finding the Lost Graves of Muskowekwan (Popular Mechanics)
- Is ‘School of Rock’ Still in Session for the Movie’s Now-Grown Child Actors, 20 Years Later? (Billboard)
- The Queer Punks Ready to Piss in Ron DeSantis’ Backyard (Daily Beast)
- John Monteleone: The Chisels Are Calling (Premier Guitar)
- Means TV: inside the leftist, worker-owned streaming service (The Guardian)
- Inside the rightwing takeover of protest music (The Guardian)
- Standoff At 1492 Land Back Lane (The Walrus)
- Watching The Resistance: In western Canada, land defenders keep filming (Columbia Journalism Review)
- In Era of Overlapping Crises, Drug-user Organizers Share Lessons Learned Fighting Abandonment (Shadowproof)
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An editorial board of user-activists takes on the opioid crisis (Columbia Journalism Review)
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Music criticism in the time of stans and haters (Columbia Journalism Review)
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America’s labor crises hit a depleted beat (Columbia Journalism Review)
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The live-streaming boom proves that accessibility in live music can — and should — be a priority (CBC)