The dazzling matrix of Moon Duo’s newest release Occult Architecture Vol. 2 is a lighter exploration than that of Vol. 1, which boasted a heavier psych soundscape that crawled through fuzzy chord structures and syncopated rhythms. The brainchild of Wooden Shijp’s Erik “Ripley” Johnson and Sanae Yamada, Moon Duo has secured a permanent place in the modern psych rock scene, providing hypnotic injections of electronic beats that levitate upon reverb-soaked harmonies coming together in clusters of sound bursting open across the stratosphere. Written in reflection of seasonal changes, their follow up to Volume 1 has a nostalgic, texturally dreamy feel to it- with 80’s synth droplets weaving through songs like “Sevens” that showcases shimmery, taffeta guitar riffs that evolve into heady manifestations over pulsating percussion.
Other highlights include tracks like “The Crystal World” that have tribal rhythmic patterns juxtaposed against linear phaser strands trickling down into crystallized geometric shapes. A marriage of yin and yang, Vol. 1 & Vol. 2 provides a congruous listening experience that goes from mysterious and abstract to ethereal and spatially uninhibited, mirroring altering physical and emotional states. A conversation with Yamada gave insight into the inner workings of this latest release and the inspirations behind the creation of this two album opus.
You guys made the move from San Francisco to Portland about five years ago. How have you liked living in the Pacific Northwest?
I really like Portland. It’s a great place to be- we’re in the Northeast part of the city and live in a very mellow neighborhood. It’s very different from San Francisco. It’s a much smaller city, but there is a lot going on here.
You guys are heading to Europe after your dates in New York. Are you looking forward to it?
Yeah, very much so. Our first European tour was in 2010 and we have gone at least a couple times a year since then. On this trip we are going to Spain and that is one of my all-time favorite places to play. I really enjoy the people there, the food, and for a lack of a better word the “vibe” that they have going on over there. It’s just a good mix between laid back and energetic- there is a real passion for rock n’ roll in Spain that I really appreciate and identify with.
It seems like Europe is always a step ahead of the United States when it comes to catching onto what’s new and interesting in the psychedelic rock scene.
With the United States it’s so vast and there are so many subcultures that are separated from each other. It can feel really big, but I do love touring the United States- it’s always good to be at home and there is something special about playing in a grungy rock bar in the states because there is nothing like that really anywhere. Though with that being said, we definitely have a bigger audience in Europe.
A lot of krautrock/psych rock bands seem to have a bigger audience and draw in Europe than the United States and there seems to be a deeper appreciation for that kind of sound in Europe as a whole.
I think so. There is certainly more interest in it right now. It seems to be that there is an almost more underground feel to this kind of music in the states while in Europe there is a broad cultural appreciation of it.
What did you grow up listening to? What was your upbringing/childhood like?
I was born outside of DC and my early childhood was spent in Los Angeles and my later childhood and teen years were spent in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I grew up initially listening to whatever my parents were playing and they were big fans of The Beatles, The Beach Boys, Joni Mitchell, and Bob Dylan. My mom also really loved Tina Turner, Aretha Franklin, and a lot of Mo Town and Soul Music. I grew up listening to a combination of those growing up and then started getting into bands like Pink Floyd and The Bengals. When I was about nine or ten my best friend and I got into all the rumors around some of The Beatles albums like the coda in “Strawberry Fields Forever” and where they say Paul is dead and translating the record backwards- I liked the idea that there could be secret messages in music and whether or not they were, in fact, secret messages, they kind of opened the door to my love of psychedelia.
It sounds like a lot of your musical tastes were cultivated by what your parents were listening to. It’s such a different world now where kids can just hop on the internet and have a vast amount of music available to them. It’s like seeing six-year-olds with iPhones- it’s a little bit mind boggling.
It is very mind blowing. It is also amazing to see how quickly kids take to technology. Like little kids that are exposed to these technologies pick things up right away. I know ten-year-olds that are more adept at dealing with their phones than I am.
Occult Architecture is quite the name for this two-volume album- can you talk about the inspiration behind it?
We were reading about esoterica, hermetic sciences, and occult knowledge- things that predate contemporary science that were trying to understand natural phenomena and how the natural world operated. I think that stuff is really interesting as there was a huge focus on unseen forces, hidden energies, and things operating beyond the scope of human sensory perception. That’s sort of the root of the title- this idea of hidden knowledge. Especially hidden knowledge that pertains to the structure of reality. Our music is pretty repetitive structurally and that sort of led to our shared interest in this whole hidden pattern thing. A lot of the structure of matter is based on repeating patterns- for example the structure of cells and how you find these certain shapes in nature that you see over and over again like spirals and circles. We both have this affinity for repetition in music and how the idea of repetition expands out in every direction.
Vol 1 & 2 are stylistically similar in some ways, but Vol 1 has a noticeably darker feel than that of Vol 2 which has a lighter and airier presence.
That was definitely intentional. We wanted them to be halves of the same whole. Related to each other but representative of a different side of a particular kind of balance. The first record is meant to be darker but not meant to be super gothic or morbid- darker in a sense where it feels a little more claustrophobic and is inward looking. I kind of think of these albums as a head with two faces.
What was the songwriting process like for these albums?
Initially, we had a bunch of music we started developing and there was too much to sit on one piece of vinyl and then we started thinking we could do two. The pieces started coming together and certain songs were going in more expansive directions and led to the two different volumes. The idea of two volumes occurred at the same time that we were working on the songs. The basic tracking was done in Portland and we did a bunch of overdubs at home- we tried to use the separation in time and season to give the record different flavors and characters.
Where do you see Moon Duo’s place in the psych rock scene today- it seems like there are more and more bands popping onto the scene every minute
The whole idea of psychedelia is great because it is so open. I think any type of music can qualify as psychedelic depending on what you do with it. There is psychedelic hip hop out there and psychedelic jazz- I don’t know exactly where we sit. We are both big fans of 60’s and 70’s psych but that’s not really our sound- we are not trying to go for that. We are trying to explore the idea of being a hybrid- when you think of the guitar and psych effects combining with more electronic sounds that branch out to new wave and whatever DEVO is- for example Suicide was a big inspiration and you can’t really place them in any one genre. There wasn’t any point where we were trying to sound like DEVO or Suicide, but we liked this concept of not cleaving to any particular set of parameters in terms of genre and that’s our goal in a broader sense.
Moon Duo will be making their way through Europe this summer – don’t miss your chance to see them live…
