Moon Duo will release their “psychedelic opus in two separate volumes” next year, Occult Architecture, and the first volume is due out February 3rd via Sacred Bones. The band’s guitarist Ripley Johnson has this to say about the upcoming effort:
“The concept of the dark/light, two-part album came as we were recording and mixing the songs, beginning in the dead of winter and continuing into the rebirth and blossoming of the spring. 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 and that fed into the whole vibe”.
The band’s keyboardist Sanae Yamada adds,
“The two parts are also intended to represent inverted components of a singular entity, like two faces on the same head which stare always in opposite directions but are inextricably driven by the same brain?.
Hmmm, seems like an apt metaphor for Moon Duo–two faces of the same head sharing a brain. Speaking of that brain, if this new track “Cold Fear” is any indication, sounds like the pair might be forming some new synaptic connections up in there. While part of the power of Moon Duo has always been their single-minded devotion to the Immaculate Hypnotic Groove, at times I’ve worried that devotion might be suffocating. This new track finds them on familiar ground but things have loosened up a bit and like the first green of Spring poking up thru Winter’s frozen ground, “Cold Fear”, title aside, shows the promise of new growth!
