3 Moons – Astronomy Of Dreams
Fighters wound with weapons and flatterers wound with words. So runs part of Modal Glyph lore, an ancient system of inter-disciplinary correspondences that uses music, via planetary forces, for healing and magical purposes. Hence “Mars In Phrygian” here is a drifting mind massage through the mists of times, an encounter with the God of War unleashing the wrath of free-form sax and the sound of a trip going bad quickly. On the flipside, the neutral “Mercury In Hypophyrgian” is a soothing exercise in nebulous synth play.
3 Moons’ Astronomy Of Dreams is no vague horoscope or zen Themic balance, however, for its deep ley lines intersect on the paths of myth, religion and the cosmos. Slo-mo space-rocker “Nazi Zuni Lulu Annunaki”, for example, is a hodgepodge of Mesopotamian deities and First Nation imagery, its creeping retro-futurist synth playing off against buzzing low-end. The well-travelled “Snake From Blood To Sky IV”, too, is all over the temporal map, solemn piano providing stability to the misfiring and foreboding electronics, the doomed combination conjuring the band playing on as the Titanic sinks – except this ship’s a hovercraft and it’s being overrun with Sentinel squid.
Astronomy Of Dreams isn’t limited to esoteric psychedelia though. It charts all of Jefferson Zurna and Dena Goldsmith-Stanley’s learnings to date and as such equally takes in acoustic-led freak-folk excursions, the unstable “Smoke From The Well” blending its meandering strum into an undertow of dangerously sad strings and an extended passage of drones and experimental oscillations. The mesmeric “This Old Christ”, reputedly inspired by a “weird encounter” with Lee “Scratch” Perry, is full of reverbed acoustic riffs too, its sleepy psyche-folk harmonies recalling the creaky duets of Stephen McBean and Amber Webber, the track’s needling synth dragging its bottom-end off into darker places.
The visionary Astronomy Of Dreams is an olde worlde, dog-eared kind of record, but one that tells of a series of fascinating alternate histories. Just for a moment consider what if antiquity’s sacred and folkloric texts were all literal? Spend 40 absorbing minutes in the company of 3 Moons to find out.
Best track: “This Old Christ”
~Astronomy Of Dreams is out now on limited edition vinyl via Moon Glyph.~