Mickey Moonlight is one of today’s most eccentric Electro producers. The British Ed Banger constituent has released two EPs to date, and likes to describe his music as ‘Science Fiction Exotica’. After a period of honing his production, and earning himself a little name recognition, the time is ripe for Moonlight’s grand expedition. With the help of his Time Axis Manipulation Corporation, Mickey Moonlight takes his listener on a journey to a wonderful, sometimes chilling future, full of Love-Bots, DNA ‘perfection’, and intergalactic travel.
The album is not a technical masterpiece, but rather, it’s a conceptual pleasure in its boundless idiosyncrasy and variety. From Sub-Saharan Mali, Moonlight alludes to ethnic Dogon mythology of extraterrestrials surfacing from the landed spacecraft Pelu Tolo (a shortened sample from his most recent EP). Moonlight evokes the vintage synthesis of Vangelis’s Blade Runner soundtrack – with a sanguine and haunting atmosphere during the Trans-friendly opener ‘Welcome Aboard’, and with deep hanging synths, and distant distorted distopian ambiance in ‘A Big Ship Passing’. ‘We’ll Meet Again’, with vocals from Marina Gasolina, is a welcome return home with its downtempo funk; otherwise, Moonlight seems to keep his listener in strange and foreign places.
In more typical Ed Rec fashion, ‘Diamonds in the Mind of Talula’ is the album’s standard post-Daft Punk fare, providing The TAM Corp’s most introspective sounds with its emotional piano chords and soft synth arpeggios. Diamonds’ thoughtfulness isn’t all that long lived however, as Mickey decides two tracks later to indulge in the kitsch-psych melodies of ‘Buckaroo Banzai’. That’s alright though – by then, he’s earned the right to let his peculiarity fully realize itself.
While there’s probably insufficient evidence to conclude that Mickey Moonlight produced this album during an acid-induced road trip from Accra to Niamey, with an Isaac Asimov reincarnate as companion, I think it’s fair not to rule it out as a possibility. Mickey Moonlight has stated that he had to cut many tracks from the final album, and that he looks forward to releasing more material in the not-too-distant future. I imagine his being able to transcend time and all would probably make that an easy timeline to manage.
Mickey Moonlight and the Time Axis Manipulation Corporation is available now on iTunes from Ed Banger Records.
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