Steve Gunn & David Moore
Let the Moon Be a Planet
Rvng Intl
/
2023
LP
24.99
RVNGNL99 / Includes Download Code
Incl. VAT plus shipping / Orders from outside the EU are exempt from VAT
Tracklist
1Over The Dune
2Painterly
3Scattering
4Basin
5Morning Mare
6Libration
7Paper Limb
8Rhododendron

Steve Gunn and David Moore's »Let the Moon Be a Planet» is a volume of improvisatory exchanges between classical guitar and piano, and a meeting place where two artists become acquainted through instrumental dialogue without a single expectation distracting them from the joy and open field possibility of collaboration.

A project enveloped by an aura of reciprocity, »Let the Moon Be a Planet« unfolded from an invitation to connect between two New York-based musicians who admired each other's work but had never intersected: guitarist and songwriter Steve Gunn, whose solo, duo, and ensemble recordings represent milestones of contemporary guitar-guided material, and pianist and composer David Moore, acclaimed for his minimalist ensemble music as the leader of Bing & Ruth. The exchange began remotely as Gunn and Moore responded to one another's solo improvisations, embarking on a synergistic progression of deep listening and connection through musical conversation. »We were both fans of each other's music and this was a chance to try a different process which was much more open,« says Moore. »It felt like something I needed personally as an artist, to not be so controlling over the final output, and to truly collaborate with somebody else.«

Calibrating their focus to connect with a spectrum of inner and external emotional realities, the duo found their way into a world where the most subtle of gestures can eternally flow. Let the Moon be a Planet is an ode to experimentation over outcome; it holds a candle light to the corners of introspection and captures the patterns that flicker within. Cast across the compositions of the album is a gritty, filmic grain _ a quality that emerged partially from recording »without the greatest microphones« or their usual studio environments. For both artists, this lo-fi sensitivity felt integral to the record and its production, and they worked closely with engineer Nick Principe to preserve its otherworldly haze in the final mixes. Across the record's eight compositions, the rippling impulses of Gunn and Moore's inner worlds converge in the spirit of two strangers wandering the same path, engaged in a daydream state of natural back and forth. Melodic tableaux arise, drift and disperse across serene open spaces, painted in earthy hues of nylon string and balmy, undulating keys _ side by side, the duo converse in tessellating motifs and gestures of lucid introspection, cultivated by a shared desire for intuitive play.