Moon Duo Announces Stars Are The Light LP & Share Title Track

It’s been two years since Portland synth and guitar outfit, Moon Duo released their two-part psychedelic opus, Occult Architecture in Volumes I and II, Use Your Illusion-style.  In the time since, they’ve toured extensively, traveled the world, and found themselves in amazing positions like the set they performed at the Sacred Bones Records 10 year anniversary celebration accompanied onstage by filmmaker/musician, Jim Jarmusch (Down By Law, Ghostdog, Coffee And Cigarettes, etc.).  We even saw Ripley Johnson returning to his San Francisco band, Wooden Shjips to put out a brand new studio album and live LP.  The last physical release of “new” music that we received from Moon Duo was actually a 12-inch featuring a pair of covers by influential proto-punk legends, Iggy Pop and Suicide founder, Alan Vega, respectively.  Handling production on that 2-song EP was Pete “Sonic Boom” Kember, the UK space rock pioneer behind such groundbreaking projects as Spectrum and Spacemen 3.  Today, Moon Duo announce a brand new full length and, this time around, Sonic Boom will be returning to produce the entire thing.

Titled Stars Are The light, the upcoming album sees the droned-out two-piece heading into a markedly different direction than we’ve come to expect from them over the years.  Our first preview of what marks the group’s 7th studio album, comes via the title track, which has a noticeably brighter, almost sparkling sound to it.  Sanae Yamada (synth, vocals) addresses the shift by stating, “We have changed, the nature of our collaboration has changed, the world has changed, and we wanted the new music to reflect that.”

The press release offers the additional insights into the project.

“These are songs about embodied human experience — love, change, misunderstanding, internal struggle, joy, misery, alienation, discord, harmony, celebration — rendered as a kind of dance of the self, both in relation to other selves and to the eternal dance of the cosmos.”

Taking disco as its groove-oriented departure point, Stars Are the Light shimmers with elements of ’70s funk and ’90s rave. Johnson’s signature guitar sound is at its most languid and refined, while Yamada’s synths and oneiric vocals are foregrounded to create a spacious percussiveness that invites the body to move with its mesmeric rhythms. With Sonic Boom (Spacemen 3, Spectrum) at the mixing desk in Portugal’s Serra de Sintra, (known to the Romans as “The Mountains of the Moon”) the area’s lush landscape and powerful lunar energies exerted a strong influence on the vibe and sonic texture of the album.”

You read that right, it cites disco as a point of inspiration.  That being said, I wouldn’t take it too literally, or expect them to abandon their own natural sensibilities in favor of emulating KC & The Sunshine Band.  At least, not yet.

Stars Are The Light is slated for a September 27th release date, but is available for pre-order now via Sacred Bones.  Special edition variants are available — one of which comes with an enamel pin — but the runs are limited… so, if you’re planning to get on that, you should probably plan to get on that.  Those of you overseas — or anyone else prepared to pay the international shipping — make sure to check out the limited DINKED edition on yellow vinyl, with hand-numbered print of the cover art by Paraiso Frafica.

Check out the first single below, followed by a full track list and tour dates.