Moon Duo

After the expectations that follow a band’s debut – will they change direction, will they carry across that fledgling potential; in short, will their second record actually be any good? – in many ways a third record is what directly addresses a musician’s longevity. A sense of voice and tone has been established, and listeners have faith in the artistry. Colorado’s Moon Duo have always cultivated a dreamy, protean sound, and their third album Shadow Of The Sun takes this even further. It is psychedelic but never inaccessible, born in part from band members Ripley Johnson and Sanae Yamada feeling ill at ease with any time not spent making music.

“It’s not all downtime,” Yamada recounts of the band’s recent time away from touring and recording. “But for some reason that period of time felt restful, but also very unrestful. I’m not sure how to describe it exactly, but for me, it felt like one of those times in life when you’re just… Sometimes I go through these times of feeling I’m finished with whatever habits and mindsets defined a certain time in my life, they just feel old, and I start seeking out new ones. Ones that fit how I’m feeling about existence, about the world, at the time. Right now it’s a mix between laziness and errand-running. We’re in the middle of a lot of heavy touring, so when we get home it’s in these little pockets of time. Half of it is sleeping and watching Seinfeld reruns, and the other half is running around trying to take care of everything we couldn’t do on the road.”

The singer-keyboardist laughs. “It’s like psychological moulting. Sometimes I need to just shed some kind of skin.”

It is a philosophy that seems to find itself reflected in Moon Duo’s music itself. The pair have often remarked on the transformative nature of music, and luring listeners towards a different consciousness is fundamental to their output. Moon Duo are an act drawn to convergence and unexpected connections, and in recent times Yamada has experienced this first-hand while roaming about on tour.

“It’s a strange kind of binary lifestyle. It’s either very, very outward, or very inward. The travel is wonderful, but it also changes one’s brain. Going from place to place to place, I have moments on every tour where I wake up and I have no idea where I am for five minutes and have to reach back in my head to work out where we are. There are moments where I feel a certain malaise about it, and moments where I love it. That dislocation is a unique experience, which has its upsides and downsides, but it has definitely transformed the way I experience time and geography.”

Moon Duo’s upcoming Australian tour will mark their third visit Down Under, and while Yamada is generally a measured, thoughtful speaker, when talk turns to these gigs her voice becomes more animated and excited. Their relationships with live audiences are of particular relevance to Moon Duo’s artistry, and the Australian music scene is of particular interest.

“Wherever we go, we get temporarily but intensely absorbed into the local music scene for the night. I think there’s a sort of communal thread to those scenes around the world, but the audiences and the interactions can vary pretty widely from place to place. Sometimes it’s a reflection of underlying behavioural norms and cultural customs – that is quite interesting.

“Australian audiences I find very friendly actually, really open. I feel like my memories of Australian shows always involve good hangs with people afterwards. People will come right up and talk to us, and they generally seem really great.”

One of the most enticing aspects of Moon Duo’s forthcoming shows is the inclusion of live painting. It is an intriguing blend of disciplines, and one which more and more artists are being drawn towards. As Yamada explains, even identical sets will contain subtle differences in the music, and no two performances are ever repeated. Enhancing this individuality with impromptu artworks builds on the audience’s immersion, a sensory banquet of overlapping image and sound.

“Originally the inspiration was kind of an acid test of those experiences in the ’60s in San Francisco, where their goal was to achieve the state of sensual interplay. And I think that that’s a really great aspect of art as related to music. You have a live music performance, and even if it’s recorded or on video, it can never really be experienced again. Whatever happens on that night, between the band and the crowd, the energy in the room, all of these factors combine in a chemical reaction. And to me, that’s the artistic experience of live music from either side – playing it or watching it. And so I really want to make an effort to make that experience as singular as possible, from as many sensory angles as possible. Usually we have a live mix, and the concert is never quite the same on any given night either. That’s the beauty of it, I think.

“Part of it is that none of us really move around much onstage,” she laughs. “We’re not Nick Cave prowling down on the edge of the stage and getting right in people’s faces, engaging them in that way. That being absent from our performance, it’s kind of an effort to pull people in maybe. We want to create an environment that feels interactive.

[Moon Duo photo by Antonio Curcetti]