Moonwood - Aubade (CAN 2009)

MOONWOOD is an acid folk project by Canadian Jakob Rehlinger, who is also a member of the experimental noise trio NEW YAKI.

Aubade is a very fine improvised instrumental loose psychedelic folk record that creates an atmosphere of awe and mysticism.

Excellent!

Q: Where exactly are you from?

A: I am from Vancouver Island, British Columbia. But now I live in Toronto.

Q: Do you want your real name mentioned? If so: What is your real name?

A: My real name is Jakob Rehlinger.

Q: How recorded?

A: This album was recorded on a 16 track digital recorder in my living room. Though I suppose a lot of the actual "recording" was done within a looper pedal. Also because I was using the looper pedal to layer improviations live, each song only uses maybe four or five of the recorder's 16 tracks.

Q: When recorded?

A: Late spring of 2009, I believe.

Q: Who involved? Who played what?

A: I played all the instruments. This album is pretty acoustic guitar heavy.

Q: Any more releases? Any "official" releases?

A: I recorded 11 Moonwood CDs under the name Babel in 2007. The best of that material is collected on a Moonwood CD called "Forest Ghosts". That's also available through my label Arachnidiscs.

Q: Since when does this project exist?

A: This project evolved out of one of my other projects, Babel which I'd be working on since 1999. Babel started out as a sound-collage project with elements of minimalist composition. Eventually my interest in improvised psyche music started bleeding into that project until I decided a name change was in order to reflect the change in direction. Then Moonwood was born somewhere in 2008/09. - Ironically there's a new Babel CD coming out in the next month.

Q: Any previous bands worth mentioning?

A: Not previous bands but I'm currently in a trio called New Yaki with Stephen Wolf (Partli Cloudi) and Andrew MacGregor (Gown/The Bark Haze). Though we live in three distant cities and that makes it hard to be productive. A few different labels have put out cassettes by New Yaki.

Q: How'd you "label" your music? (I know... nobody wants to get labeled... bla bla bla...)

A: Psyche, free-psyche, improv, acid-folk. All the usual labels that apply to this kind of thing.

Q: Influences?

A: I have to admit I hear a lot of Six Organs of Admittance in this one. Though I'm not sure I'd ever say he's a a direct influence. The really early Pink Floyd (pre-Piper at the Gates of Dawn) is a big influence on everything I do. As is King Crimson. I suppose Espers, Pocahaunted, all the usual suspects. I really like a lot of the stuff on Digitalis.

Q: Website, Myspace?

A: http://www.reverbnation.com/moonwood - http://www.myspace.com/heavymoon - http:/www.arachnidiscs.wordpress.com

Q: Anything that you think is interesting, that you'd like to inform the blog readers about...

A: There's a new Moonwood album called "Coal Aberrations" which is almost ready. It features several other people for the first time. Ameen from Healthy Animal, Stephen and Andrew again. Cellos, horns and flutes, oh my. I'm pretty excited about it. It's the whole being greater than the sum of the parts thing. I'm fairly proud of "Aubade", but I think the new album is that much better because of everyone else's contributions.

Here is a video for hey judas, don't let me down from the new album "Coal Abberations":

- Oh one more thing: The physical release of "Aubade" comes with a DVD of Moonwood films.

MOONWOOD: Aubade (CAN 2009)

(mp3-zip, 6 tracks, 50 min, 69,8 MB)

Get it here or here or here!