Moon Duo
Moon Duo’s second LP, ‘Circles’, is released next Monday, October 1st, on Souterrain Transmissions ahead of their UK tour.
Inspired by Ralph Waldo Emerson's 1841 essay ‘Circles’, the duo of Wooden Shijps guitarist Ripley Johnson and Sanae Yamada, continue to expand upon their hypnotic kraut-rock inspired mantras.
This time, however, the record takes a lighter turn, managing to be melodic and catchy whilst maintaining the power and magnetism of their previous work.
Single ‘Sleepwalker’ was brought to life with a tongue-in-cheek video featuring Canadian punk King Khan.
Formed in San Francisco in 2009 by Wooden Shijps guitarist Ripley Johnson and Sanae Yamada, Moon Duo’s first two critically acclaimed EPs, Killing Time (2009) and Escape (2010), fused the futuristic pylon hum and transistor reverb of Suicide or Silver Apples with the heat-haze fuzz of American rock ‘n’ roll to create tracks of blistering, 12-cylinder space rock.
Their debut album Mazes, recorded in San Francisco and mixed in Berlin during 2010 as the band prepared to move to the mountains of Colorado, explores a far broader, lighter, sound.
That’s most clear on the dreamy organ and skipping riff of the title track, which recalls the Velvet Underground, or the handclaps and swinging organ bloops over the potent shredding and guttural riff delivered by Johnson in When You Cut. Throughout, Mazes is the sound of Moon Duo carving out their own identity, looking to the horizon, and moving forward.
Late 2011 saw the release of the darker, mostly instrumental Horror Tour EP around the band’s fall tour of Eastern Europe; Record Store Day 2012 brought a limited edition LP Mazes Remixed which featured remixes by the likes of Sonic Boom, Psychic Ills, and Purling Hiss.
Now Moon Duo are set to release Circles, their second full-length LP with Souterrain Transmissions. The band will also set off on a worldwide tour in support of the album in October and November.
Circles is the product of a long winter’s isolation in the Rocky Mountains, though the road to its fruition stretched over six months and several locations.
The groundwork for the album was laid at the band’s home in Blue River, Colorado in the early months of 2012, where all songs were written, and the preliminary tracks recorded. For two weeks in early April, Moon Duo moved into a small apartment above Lucky Cat
Recordings in San Francisco for an additional recording session with engineer Phil Manley (Trans Am, Life Coach). Like it’s predecessor, the album was mixed and tweaked at Kaiku Studios in Berlin.
See Moon Duo live:
Nov 12th: Glasgow, Captains Rest
Nov 13th: Leeds, Brudenell Social Club
Nov 14th: London, Corsica Studios
Nov 15th: Wrexham, Central Station
Nov 16th: Bristol, The Croft