HIP CHECK: Moon Goose Generates Error-Free “Source Code”
At it’s best, music is a shortcut to accessing and defining emotions – the fast-track to all the shadings, in-betweens, variations, and just plain indescribable uncertainties that words can’t touch. Via the right music, even the most subtle emotion can be given voice. Just think of the classic scene from Say Anything where Cusack’s character can only reveal his truest feelings by way of a song on a boombox over his head.
This is all the more true with instrumental music. My delight with instrumental rock began in a typical SoCal way: The Ventures, Booker T and the MG’s and Dick Dale. These world-class innovators not only lit me up, they inspired my search for similar performers like Link Wray, Duane Eddy and Ennio Morricone. Taken together, theirs was a language that, when the wind blew right, spoke to my soul.
It’s by way of this rambling prologue that we come to how I discovered the music of Moon Goose. While perusing an Apple “new music” playlist, a song called Le Comte (video below) hit me like a shot of Jack on an empty stomach: instantly intoxicating. My consciousness was fully hijacked. Sly and slithering, then growing… growing… into a hella-groovy, psychedelic power-romp crescendo. Wow. With no vocals. Double wow. Who WAS this band?!? Pulsing, snaking, so purely emotional and tap-dancing in all my happy places. This band simply didn’t need vocals. It was music for its own sake. My kind of music.
N’uff said. I had to find out more.
“Traditional tradesmen and arthouse web designers by day, astounding musos by nightfall, their hypnotic and metamorphic psychedelic ‘rock’ described by the band themselves as the ‘sound of a dragon colliding with an asteroid.’”
— from the Moon Goose band bio
Their web bio is wonderfully imaginative and pointedly abstract. From it I’ve pieced together that they stack up this way:
- Des Davies — Guitars
- Antoine Mouquod — Drums
- Dave Prescott — Synths
- Rob Robinson — Bass
- Ade Williams — Guitars
- Leon Johnson — Producer/Utility Player
Based in western England, due south of Liverpool and southwest of Birmingham, almost to Wales in the town of Hay-on-Wye, the band operates locally, doing much of its musical exploring in an ancient barn. The BBC and some American stations picked up on them briefly but not for nearly long enough. Pity. This band has yet to hit its moment of supreme combustion. That moment, however, WILL come. I’m certain of it. Especially with reports of new music coming in Spring 2020.
Words, not surprisingly, do not do them justice. Just listen. Should they ever perform in Los Angeles, I will approach the opportunity with a combination of glee and quiet respect, for I’m fully certain my head will be laid to waste. And I can’t wait.
Close your eyes. Open your mind.
Trust your ears.