Sunday, September 14, 2014

Moon Duo, live @ An Club (Athens. September 11, 2014)

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Start of the autumn live music season at An Club with a fine performance by San Francisco's Moon Duo. The band may have started its journey as a duo comprised by Wooden Ships' leader Ripley Johnson and keyboardist Sanae Yamada but now, at least on stage, they have been transformed to a trio with the addition of drummer John Jeffrey whose powerful, metronomic pounding has replaced the drum machine beat.


The drums may have increased the dynamism of Moon Duo's live sound, but the heart of their music remains the interplay between the repetitive, trance-inducing sounds coming from Yamada's  keyboards and the buzzing riffs, delivered with surgical precision from Johnson's guitar.


The splendid mix of hazy psychedelic melodies, krautrock repetition and Suicide intensity has become the trademark sound of Ripley Johnson, whether he is playing with Wooden Shjips or Moon Duo.

With Moon Duo the less is more approach is applied and by sticking to the bare essentials of this heady recipe, the song may seem to remain the same from start to finish of the 70-minute set, but the intensity is multiplied and the appreciative applause at the end proves that their trance-mission has been accomplished once again.


Sample Moon Duo's An Club trance-mission below and click here for a taste of Wooden Shjips in action three months before at Plissken Festival:



Moon Duo's Ripley Johnson

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