Gábor Lukin
From Unearthing The Music
Gábor Lukin is a Hungarian composer and the founding member of one of the most well known Hungarian new wave music bands, Trabant. Lukin played together with Marietta Méhes and János Vető only for five years, from 1980 to 1985 when the band broke up but this formation was the first underground rock band and had huge popularity. Lukin played the keyboard and mostly composed the songs. Trabant's songs had a particular, dreamy mood, which resembled the Velvet Underground in New York. They very freely used music genres.
The band played among the four walls, and the demand for their house-copied cassettes was high. The Trabant became from an “apartment-band” to “stage-band” thanks to the film by János Xantus. The band appeared, and Marietta Méhes sang in the film titled “Eszkimó asszony fázik” (Eskimo Woman Feels Cold).
The history of Trabant interwove with the other underground band, Balaton, which was also established in 1980, because of the co-operation between members of both bands and the fact that they also played some concerts together. According to the former concert-goers and music experts, Trabant and Balaton worked with a lot of associations and playful elements. The difference was that Trabant created music for themselves in a closed, inner circle.
Gábor Lukin has been living in Los Angeles since the mid-1980s. Nowadays he is working as an organist in a church, additionally dealing with composing and translation. In 2011 a film was created on the story of the band titled “Ragaszthatatlan szív”, borrowing the title a Trabant song (directed by Lili Horváth).