Monkeys Of LaGrande is an international music project created in 2020 by Luk LaGrande.
The project involves a collaboration between artists from all over the world.

Although the instrumental part of the songs were created and written by Luk LaGrande, all the artists involved were free to play their own styles and include their unique personalities, thus making each track sound special and one of a kind.

This way of creating music has been so stimulating and fascinating that Luk decided to keep going along this path, continuing to involve artists from different countries who have the pleasure to join the project, uniting different cultures & playing styles and joining them in one common language - music.

If you are interested in joining the crew, drop a message or email info@monkeysoflagrande.com

Influences

Luk LaGrande:

"It's really hard for me to name all the artists and bands that I like and influenced me over the years. I really listen to everything and appreciate Jeff Buckley as well as Sepultura.

Rather than make an endless list, I thought it might be nice to go over the major milestones that have brought me to where I am now, both as a musician and as a listener.

I have a vague memory of one summer during a camping trip. This guy brought his boombox to the beach...I was really struck by a song and he translated the title for me to Italian and told me "it means: combatti il fuoco con il fuoco"... of course I'm writing it in english now so that doesn't make any sense but it translates to "Fight Fire With Fire"...I didn't ask much further, and for years I never even knew (damn!!!) the name of the band!

Ok, that was just an interesting parenthesis, but I can't honestly say that it started there.

My first memory of a band that made me stop listening to what was on the radio, go to the store, buy tapes and CDs, learn the lyrics and etc, was Queen. And I think I can say that maybe they have also been one of the reasons why I started playing bass, which happened around the same time.

During the same period, I remember a couple of cassettes with random songs by Roger Waters, Pink Floyd, and Supertramp....not bad at all, looking back on it now.

In the course of 1 or 2 years, more or less everything happened...I don't remember how, but I started to listen to something by Guns N' Roses... I remember that I talked about it with a friend, who then said to me "Metallica is better than this!!"... the Black Album had just been released... I bought it and that was the real turning point, positive, but in some ways also negative: for at least 10 years I didn't listen to anything else... Of course, I appreciated something by Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, but also, speaking of different genres, Nirvana or Porcupine Tree, but at the same time it was really difficult to listen to something that wasn’t Metallica (or Megadeth) and not be tempted to say "yeah ok, but...".

Besides being an avid listener, that was my turning point as a musician...until then I played bass myself from home... then I started to play in some Metallica cover bands.... something I did for several years, before writing & playing original music in 2006.

Important chapters are also the Freddie Mercury live tribute and the soundtrack from the movie The Crow that introduced me to many bands that I had never heard of before.

The next big step came with the discovery of Tool ... I don't know if it's because of them or if I was just ready to take the leap, but besides becoming one of the bands I appreciated most, right after I discovered them I started to listen to everything... Now, it’s rare for me to not like something. And even when I don't, I can still usually appreciate some aspect of it.

As I said from the beginning, if I just had to make a list of bands or artists it would be very long. So, leaving aside the hundreds of names that I haven’t mentioned, I think I can say that the 3 big steps in terms of "what influenced me" are Queen -> Metallica -> Tool.

Which is not so bad and could have been much worse =) " .