Tank full of Oil: Moon Duo

Moon Duo

A project of Wooden Shjips' Erik "Ripley" Johnson and Sanae Yamada, San Francisco's Moon Duo are a psychedelic Krautrock pair with chilly electronic underpinnings and drones inspired by Spacemen 3, Silver Apples, and Suicide. The group formed in 2009 and began issuing releases in short order, including the Love on the Sea 12" on Sick Thirst, which they followed with the Killing Time EP on Sacred Bones. Moon Duo made the jump to Woodsist for 2010's full-length Escape, which offered the most expansive and melodic take on their trippy sounds yet. After touring nearly incessantly following that release, Moon Duo moved their operation to the Souterrain Transmissions imprint in Berlin for Mazes later in the year, recording the set at home in San Francisco and mixing it in Germany. The album, released in the spring of 2011, followed widely acclaimed performances at SXSW; the band's sound on that record focused more on tightly written (and brightly produced) songs with fixed Motorik rhythms (there is no drummer). The set also got the remix treatment later in the year with participation from Psychic Ills, Purling Hiss, and Sonic Boom, to name a few. The band's next full-length, Circles, appeared in the fall of 2012, and was accompanied by a remix album (Circles Remixed) the following year with the album's tracks reworked by artists like Eric Copeland and Umberto. The band's release of stopgap material continued in 2014 with the live album Live in Ravenna, which featured drummer John Jeffrey. After moving their home base to Portland and with Jeffrey on board, the trio began recording its next album in a self-described dark basement. Mixed again in Germany by Jonas Verwijnen, 2015's Shadow of the Sun was the group's densest, most psychedelic record to date. Their 2017 album, Occult Architecture, took it a step further, though: the record was divided into two volumes, one representing yin and the other yang, in an effort to explore both light and darkness within their sound.