[rating=8.00]
In some strange way Moon Duo’s new album gets all that’s currently winter and cold. It’s the first part of a two part set inspired by a number of mythical and philosophical sources, by yin and yang, by dark and light. Guitarist Ripley Johnson talks about some of the thought behind the album, saying “There’s something really powerful about the changing of the seasons in the Northwest, the physical and psychic impact it has on you, especially after we spent so many years in the seasonal void of California. I became interested in gnostic and hermetic literature around that time, especially the relationship between music and occult qualities.”
This volume of Occult Architecture focuses on the darkness. It embraces the cold and the early onset of night. Revels in it even. Finds something mystifying in the shadows. They’ve got these eerie song titles like “Will of the Devil” or “Cult of Moloch,” Moloch being an ancient god that required child sacrifice. This shit is creepy. But somehow it’s still so good. It’s like watching a horror movie. There’s something about it that draws you in because of the darkness.
There are tracks like “Creepin” with their dark psychedelic synths and quick pulsating beats make you want to get into a black 70’s Mustang and gun it down a highway as night sets in. They make you want to do something crazy and get away with it, because there is a recklessness in the distortion of the guitar yet this undeniable constant of control due to the steady rhythm at the heart of all their songs. There are a lot of strong tracks on this album and god, they remind one of Suicide (RIP Alan Vega). But it’s not all sadness, because such great bands have large influences, and that’s how we get stuff like this — interpretations, fusions, glimmers of those inspirational sounds belonging now to the past.
The music is hypnotic. Its trance inducing. Moon Duo have always had that minimalistic drone style, but this time around there’s just something more sinister. The vocals are deeper, the chords are darker. And their songs have this driving energy. A hurtling fatalistic feeling. The kind that’s intoxicating — where you feel most alive because you’re so close to the opposite.
