Luke Ottenhof

Hi! I’m Luke Ottenhof (he/him), a freelance writer based in Montréal, Québec.

I write about music, culture, labour, white supremacy, colonialism, drugs, and harm reduction for outlets around the world. Recently, I’ve been reporting on cryptocurrency and crypto-colonialism, AI, music labour issues, 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.

I did communications and fact-checking for the podcast series Race Against Climate Change by Canada’s National Observer.

I’ve written artist bios for Wintersleep, Yves Jarvis, Circa Survive, Bartees Strange, Born Ruffians, Oso Oso, Kevin Devine, Jonathan Kawchuk, The Jerry Cans, Iron Chic, and many others.

I’ve served as a juror for the Digital Publishing Awards and the Polaris Music Prize.

You can follow me on Twitter: @lukeottenhof. You can contact me at ottenhofluke@gmail.com.

Recent Work

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)

Why Songwriters Can’t Have Their Own Writers Strike—Yet (Pitchfork)

Is ‘School of Rock’ Still in Session for the Movie’s Now-Grown Child Actors, 20 Years Later? (Billboard)

How Hardcore Punk Musicians Learned to Love the Gym (GQ)

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)

Wetlands vs. developers: A small-town battle with national ramifications (Broadview)

Crypto-Colonialists Use the Most Vulnerable People in the World as Guinea Pigs (Motherboard)

'Financial Colonialism': A Bitcoin Mine in Navajo Nation Flares Tensions (Motherboard)

In Era of Overlapping Crises, Drug-user Organizers Share Lessons Learned Fighting Abandonment (Shadowproof)

‘We are elite complainers’: Pup, the punk band satirising a shameless music industry (The Guardian)

After the last pandemic, Canada made labour history. Will we do it again? (Globe and Mail)

Sound of the police: how US law enforcement uses noise as a weapon (The Guardian)

The moral of Denethor’s Lord of the Rings story is stop doomscrolling (Polygon)

Why The Sopranos has become a Zoomer touchstone (Vulture)

Stress Balls Are a Sign of Our Overworked Culture (GEN)

Baristas Spill the Beans on Upscale Coffee Shops (The Tyee)

American cities are a nightmare for disabled people. Coronavirus is giving us a chance to change that (Mic)

How One Indie Label Is Combatting the Mental Health Crisis Among Musicians (Pitchfork)

An editorial board of user-activists takes on the opioid crisis (Columbia Journalism Review)

Music criticism in the time of stans and haters (Columbia Journalism Review)

America’s labor crises hit a depleted beat (Columbia Journalism Review)

DESMOND COLE WANTS YOU TO KNOW THAT CANADA ISN’T ALL THAT NICE (MEL Magazine)

The live-streaming boom proves that accessibility in live music can — and should — be a priority (CBC)

John Prine’s music taught me about growing up as a kid, even if I didn’t know it yet (Toronto Star)