Moon Duo
Occult Architecture, Vol. 2

We have already debated the concept behind the double album released by Moon Duo in the first half of the year 2017.

The duo, consisting of Ripley Johnson (Wooden Shjips) and Sanae Yamada, typically fascinated and interested in the world of occultism and mysticism (not just religious), presents this double work, 'Occult Architecture', to tackle the principles of Chinese philosophical thought and Yin and Yang.

In the first album, referring to the foundations of the thought and in a presentation - let's say - more or less rough, the duo aimed to address every aspect concerning one of the two sides of the 'coin', the Yin.

Considered as the dark side, as well as the female side and linked to the mysterious world of the night and the creatures that populate the Earth, the album (released in the middle of winter, last February on Sacred Bones) sounded monotonous and recalled in atmosphere certain dark-wave sounds of the eighties. This obviously without renouncing that minimal rock and roll setup typical of the duo, which has now become their most typical trademark, moreover somehow - despite its simplicity and not being in any way innovative - also a point of reference and inspiration for new bands of the neo-psychedelic genre, to which I personally do not believe this band belongs anymore. Or at least not entirely.

In reviewing the first chapter of this work, I expressed my perplexities regarding the association of 'femininity' with notions like 'darkness,' 'night,' or simply 'earth,' considering such a definition somewhat limiting. Personally, I don't know enough about Taoist cosmology to determine how much this characterization is a subject of interpretation by the duo or actually accepted as the basis of this philosophical thought. Which, in any case, is based on alternation, and so maybe the problem is simply me not seeing the basis of this alternation between masculinity and femininity, but there you go.

Anyway, if the first volume was dedicated to Yin, the second, for obvious reasons, is dedicated to what is Yang, the bright side, associated with the principles of man, sun, light, and otherworldly spirits. Ripley Johnson defined volume two as 'the palace of crystals' and clearly specified that both works are part of the same cosmological thought and as such should be understood separately but also as two parts of a whole depending on different situations.

Mixed by the usual Jonas Verwinjen in Portland (while the previous one was mixed in Berlin, who knows if this choice too does not have symbolic meanings, as well as merely logistical issues), where the previous album could be considered monotonous, repetitive, not at all innovative compared to the group's previous productions, if not simply bad; this one instead is an album that surprises for the sounds proposed by Johnson and Yamada which make 'Occult Architecture, Vol. 2' if not the best chapter of their discography, certainly the most interesting.

In this case, we can indeed speak of a return to psychedelic music and kraut-rock or space-music as an experience borrowed from the Spacemen 3 of J. Spaceman and Sonic Boom from the late eighties.

The first track, 'New Dawn', can actually be considered as a pop-rock version of Spacemen 3 with Galaxie 500 nuances, particularly for the sensitivity expressed by the evocative and at the same time somewhat evanescent singing, as if the words burn in the sunlight like our gaze when we lift our heads to the sky and end up dazzled, losing sight for a few moments. 'Mirror Edge' is an instrumental piece that hails the Velvet Underground and new-age culture; 'Sevens' and 'Lost In Light' and the same 'Crystal World' instead somehow pick up conceptual paths that belong to the seventies and the sphere of kosmische musik, that art-rock and proto-punk of La Dusseldorf by Klaus and Thomas Dinger, and at the same time that of ambient minimalism, close to the more artificial soundscapes of Brian Eno, proposed by Dieter Moebius's Harmonia, Hans-Joachim Roedelius, and Michael Rother.

The vision that comes to my mind is that of Marcello Mastroianni in 'La decima vittima' by Elio Petri, leading the sunsetists: 'We were born by chance, but fortunately, we will die by chance. This last ray of light comes to us from one hundred and forty-nine million kilometers away. Our father is leaving, and we see him fade away with our eyes. But we must not despair, crying is purifying, it frees us from everyday anxieties. And not by chance do I want to remind you that while we are watching the agony of this dear friend, our brothers in California can greet his morning rebirth. And now let's focus, the magic moment is about to strike...'

Here it is.