Listening Post

Moon Duo’s new album is split into ‘dark’ and ‘light’ volumes – listen to ‘Occult Architecture Vol. 2’ in full

Groovy, baby!

Back at the start of the year, with the cold nights and dark mornings closing in Moon Duo, fittingly, released the first of two parts to their latest album.

The Portland duo – guitarist Ripley Johnson and keyboardist Sanae Yamada – deliberately went with the dark stuff first, as our writer David Zammitt commented at the time in his review of ‘Occult Architecture Vol. 1’.

Now, it’s time for instalment II. The band have said that the two volumes of this new release can be enjoyed separately or together, but they are designed to sit side by side. ‘Occult Architecture Vol. 2’ is most definitely a lighter offering, as Ripley explains:

“In production we referred to Vol. 1 as the fuzz dungeon, and Vol. 2 as the crystal palace. The darkness of Vol. 1 gave birth to the light of Vol. 2. We had to have both elements in order to complete the cycle.”

You can check out the full album below, it’s officially out on Friday (5 May) via Sacred Bones and available to pre-order here.

Ripley Johnson from Moon Duo recently spoke to us about his experience as a teenager for our Sweet 16 column.