A Chat With: Moon Duo
Ripley Johnson and Sanae Yamada (AKA Moon Duo) released Volume 1 of their fourth studio album Occult Architecture earlier this year, and they're on the brink of releasing the second, lighter part of the album, Occult Architecture Vol. 2. After the release of the first part, the Portland-hailing pair toured around Europe playing the new songs live, and they're gearing up to do the same in America. Kicking off at the Chicago at The Empty Bottle this Friday, April 21st, Johnson says their set will feature more new songs than any of their past tours. Read on to find out more about the recording process, the purpose behind the two part album, their live show, and the Portland music scene in our chat with Moon Duo!
Photo Credit: Eleonora Collini
ANCHR Magazine: So I wanted to start off by talking about Occult Architecture Vo1. 1, which you just released in February. Can you talk a little bit about why you decided to split up the songs into two volumes, and what is it about the songs that keeps them connected, yet separated?
Ripley Johnson: Basically, when we started out recording we had a lot of material. Usually we just end up pulling stuff that doesn’t work out or stuff that doesn’t fit right. Either we don’t use it or it ends up as a single...but when we were doing this record, a lot of the material just naturally started bunching up in two different parts. Some of it was lighter and some of it was darker, so that’s where we came up with the idea of separating them thematically, based on tone. We came up with the idea of releasing one in the winter and one in the spring or summer. That came about really early on in the process, so once we realized we were going to do that, we just started naturally pushing the songs in those directions when we were recording.
AM: Very cool. And you recording in Berlin and in Portland for the two parts?
RJ: We recorded everything in Portland, but we mixed one in Berlin and one in Portland.
AM: Cool. So do you think that mixing one in a completely different location like Berlin kind of trickled into the vibe and sonically affected the album?
RJ: Yeah. We’ve mixed all of our records in Berlin before this...although we have done some mixing in California, but then ended up remixing it in Berlin. So we knew what the vibe was like there. Part of it was just to separate the sessions, so we mixed one of them in spring and then we mixed the lighter one in the summer in Portland, where we knew it was going to be really sunny and hot. We used the same engineer. The setting was important, but primarily it was just separating the sessions, so that they could have their own identity. But we’ve worked in Berlin before and Berlin has a pretty heavy vibe. It’s a fun city, but there’s a darkness to it. It’s a night time city. It could be cold there, it can be sort of uncomfortable sometimes. It’s very urban...everyone smokes all the time there. So we knew what that was like and the engineer we like to use lives in Berlin. We’d never mixed with him outside of Berlin so it ended up sort of an experiment, but it worked really well.
AM: Cool! How did you end up working with that engineer?
RJ: It started with our record Mazes, where we mixed it and then wanted to start over again. We record a lot of our stuff at home, and we don’t really know what we’re doing. A lot of it needs to be fixed and massaged in the studio. We’ve gotten better as we’ve gone along, but we met this guy through a friend of ours in Berlin who also does all of our tour managing in Europe. We just started back then working with him and we have a really good working relationship so we just keep going back to him. He does a lot of pop, and there’s a real sort of electronic bend to everything in Europe. So he has more of that perspective, whereas our natural inclination is more rock’n’roll...American rock...garage. We don’t have a lot of experience with electronic music, but we like to experiment with it. He can just enhance things in a way because he’s worked on a lot of polished electro-pop kind of stuff. So it’s a good balance because he pushes it in one direction and we just pull him back. It creates a unique working relationship.
AM: So then did you pull influence or inspiration from any other bands for this record, or was it mostly personal experience that influenced the new songs?
R: I think thematically, part of the reason we called it Occult Architecture is that I was reading this biography of Aleister Crowley when I was writing the songs. And it was winter in Portland and I started reading all this occult stuff after that, and that just started feeding into the themes of the songs. Again, the dark and the light, once that became a thing we were working with...just the seasons in Portland are so strong. I’m sure it’s the same in Chicago. So you feel it. You feel nature, even in a city. It pulls you down in the winter. So we were exploring the whole idea of darkness and light.
AM: So then talking about playing these songs in the live setting, are there any particularly you’re looking forward to playing when you start tour?
RJ: We just came back from a month in Europe and we’ve been playing a lot of the stuff. Whenever we release a record, we always think let’s play all of the songs, cause we’re excited to play new material. Then you realize that some of it works and some of it doesn’t, in the live setting or just as far as the flow of the set. But for this tour, we’re actually playing more new songs than we ever have. From volume 1, we’re playing every song except for two, and that’s mostly because we want to play a few old songs for people who want to hear something older. I feel like there’s a tone to the set that works really well.
AM: Nice! Are there any cities that you’re particularly excited to play in?
RJ: All of them...we always look forward to going to Chicago, because Chicago is always great to us and we have some family there. Detroit is amazing, always. New York. All of it’s really great. We’re looking forward to doing the tour with Jackie Lynn. She’s from Chicago and her band is from Chicago, and we don’t often get to do a tour with another band and we’re huge fans, so we’re really looking forward to that.
AM: So talking more about where you’re from, you mentioned the seasons in Portland, but can you talk about the local scene in Portland? Are there any other bands that you’re really into or venues that you’d recommend?
RJ: We really like a place called The Know. It just closed and reopened in a new neighborhood, so we’re looking forward to that. Unfortunately we’re on the road so much that we don’t get to see that many shows here, but there’s a great music scene. It’s such a small city, but we get so many touring bands that come through. We’re kind of spoiled. People here get to see so much music for such a tiny city, it’s kind of unusual.
AM: Any other bands that you’re really into at the moment or albums that you’re listening to a lot?
RJ: The new Jackie Lynn record. There’s a band called Nest Egg that we’re really into. Kikagaku Moyo are friends of ours from Tokyo.
AM: Very cool. So circling back to when you first got into music, do you have a first musical memory of when you first picked up an instrument or first wrote your first song?
RJ: The first instrument I picked up was my mom’s classical guitar, which was probably the worst thing to learn on. When I was a kid me and my friends would pretend we were playing. We had these pretend guitars that someone’s dad made out of plywood and we painted them. We would just pretend to play, so my sort of musical aspirations started before I even knew what a guitar was. We just wanted to get up on stage and dance around, which is really weird to me.
AM: Nice! I always like to hear how people first got into music. So anything else for you guys this year besides Volume 2 and more touring?
RJ: That’s pretty much it. Lots of touring. New record, that’s about it.
You can grab tickets to Moon Duo's show with Jackie Lynn in Chicago tomorrow, April 21st, here. Get ready for the show by listening to Vol. 1 of Occult Architecture here: