Mazes was a more drawn-out process, involving proper recording studios for the first time including the trip to Berlin to mix and re-record certain parts and the track ‘Run Around’. “The working title was Die Blumen [the flowers], so going into the mix sessions we kind of felt like it was becoming our ‘Berlin record’, but in the end it retained the stamp of San Francisco and we liked Mazes title better anyway.” And ultimately, Mazes is a definably American record, recorded against the backdrop of the Johnson and Yamada’s move from the Californian coast to the heights of Colorado. “I think a lot of our music has something to do with the mythology of the road,” muses Moon Duo’s Sanae Yamada. And if Mazes is a quest, a journey through American landscape and music, Johnson concludes that its key is “finding one’s place in the world; moving forward, and the different paths one takes moving through life, trying to reach various goals, literally moving; love; pain; change. Or just getting by, and making sense of things”.
Moon Duo’s debut album Mazes 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.
Tracklist
A1. Seer
A2. Mazes
A3. Scars
A4. Fallout
B1. When You Cut
B2. Run Around
B3. In The Sun
B4. Goners
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.
Inspiration for many of the songs themes, as well as the title Circles, came from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s 1841 essay by the same name, on the symbol and nature of “the flying Perfect.” From the opening lines: “The eye is the first circle; the horizon which it forms is the second; and throughout nature this primary figure is repeated without end.” And so it goes. Rust never sleeps.
Tracklist
A1. Sleepwalker
A2. I Can See
A3. Circles
A4. I Been Gone
A5. Sparks
B1. Dance Pt. 3
B2. Free Action
B3. Trails
B4. Rolling Out
Mazes & Circles are both set for release on 17th September!!
