YOUR favourite psychedelic dronestronauts, Moon Duo, have announced the timely reissue of their debut album, Escape, some ten years on its original release.
Long out of print, Escape was first issued on the Woodsist label back at the turn of the decade, and has been expanded to include three extra tracks from what the band call “their wild early days”. (Really? That delicious recent psych noise is calm??).
It falls to their longtime home, the great Sacred Bones imprint, to issue the repress.
The band – Wooden Shjips’ Ripley Johnson and keyboardist Sanae Yamada – say: “We made this record in a rehearsal space in San Francisco in late 2009. A windowless room lit by string lights and an odd assortment of lamps, the walls a palimpsest of posters and gig fliers. The air seemed to hang in a permanent film of smoke residue and stale beer.
“We recorded to a 4-track tape machine over the course of a few nights – we’d just start the beats, hit ‘record’ and let fly.
“Ten years feels like both a lifetime and the blink of an eye – measurable but impossible to quantify. These four tracks, and the others that join them here, are a snapshot of our earliest incarnation: flying blind, but high on the freedom of experimentation and filled with hope for things to come.”
The LP is closer to the heavy psych grind of Wooden Shjips than the spacier synth shimmer of today. Take a listen to “In The Trees” from the album, below. Watch out for Backseat Mafia’s review in the coming weeks.
And Escape and now comes with a trio of rare cuts: “A Little Way Different”, taken from the Welcome Home: Diggin’ the Universe compilation on Woodsist, and “Catch As Catch Can” and “Set It On Fire” from a 2010 7” on Agitated.
The digital release of Escape is available immediately, with the vinyl shipping on August 28th. Order up your dose now at Moon Duo’s Bandcamp page.
