Micro Moon and the Art of Subtle Detail
Exploring the inspirations and creative process behind 'Figure in a Landscape'.
It's been fantastic to start the year with a new addition to the label - Mirco Moon, the duo of pianist/synthesist Isabel Pérez Castro and guitarist/synthesist Stephen Holbrook. Their Mini CD, Figure in a Landscape, has received an incredibly positive response. Recently, I had the chance to talk with them about their work and inspirations:
We first met at Johnny Trunk’s record fair in October of last year, and after our conversation, you sent me the tracks that make up Figure in a Landscape. I think it was the attention to detail that really stood out to me, in particular the production and how beautiful everything sounded. You worked with Margo Broom at her Hermitage Works studio and mixed a Dolby Atmos version at RAK, but I know you started the recordings at home. Tell me a little bit about your process.
Stephen: I’ve been working with Margo for years, and she’s a genius when it comes to getting to the essence of what you’re trying to achieve. She’s got an amazing balance of artistic instinct and technical knowledge, so she really helped kick things up a notch.
It’s really nice to hear someone mention attention to detail because we do agonise over the placement of small things—trying to get just the right texture, even if it’s barely perceptible. So maybe the aggro is worth it! We record everything at home very simply. It’s quite stripped back, which stops us from getting overwhelmed, and I usually produce it. We wanted to take this latest release a bit further, though.
Isabel: Yeah we don’t really have a process, we generally tend to start working on our own ideas separately (sometimes I don’t even have a previous idea in mind, and something only comes when sitting at the piano or synths and I start improvising). Then we show it to the other one and they decide what to add to it, we discuss things, and that’s when we start working together, rather than from the start.
In that way themes and ideas will just start to naturally suggest themselves.
Isabel, I know you're from Galicia, Spain, and that some tracks on Figure in a Landscape are inspired by the region. Could you tell us a bit about the culture there? I understand it's quite different from the Spain that many British people will be familiar with.
Isabel: Well it rains a lot and our traditional instrument is the bagpipes, so maybe that’s why I’m so obsessed with drones! We are also on the Atlantic coast of Spain so it definitely is not like the idea many British people have in their minds about Spain. But then we are still more similar to Spain than we ourselves might like to believe hahaha. We have our own language (quite similar to Portuguese), we consider ourselves as Celts and we do think and talk a lot about death –there’s a lot of death-related folklore.
The area is very green and the coast is quite dangerous in places, we have a history of British shipwrecks in some areas of the coast – a weird connection to Britain. But then we get proper Spanish summers too, so it’s a mix really.
Stephen: It’s a fascinating place. It can be very remote, lots of ruined houses, churches, and the highest cliffs in Europe, but it’s still very social. You don’t feel cut off. It’s definitely not a place many English tourists go in comparison with the rest of Spain though. There’s been a resurgence recently of traditional Galician folk music and language, so that’s really interesting to see develop as an outsider.
You started working together at the start of the pandemic. What bands and musical projects have you previously been involved in?
Isabel: none really, I’ve never played in bands, just on my own at home, I’m not an exhibitionist like Steve!
I studied classical piano and although I enjoy playing certain composers, I never really saw the point in doing classical music only. So I sort of stopped playing for a while once I finished all my courses (it sort of felt like a liberation really, as by the point I finished I knew I’d never be a “pianist” so my attitude was a little bit like “fuck it, now I finished this, got the piece of paper saying I’ve finished and that’s it”). And I only came back to it after like 3 or 4 years, when I went back to improvising my own ideas and playing with other keyboards and synths, but a band or a project never really happened –not that I was against that idea, it just didn’t happen.
Stephen: I’ve been playing in bands for most of my life. I’m primarily a Guitarist playing rock, indie post punk, what have you. I was Guitarist/Bassist in a band called Cop on the Edge for many years and I currently play in a three-piece called They Explode. I did some additional music for a TV comedy with the comedian Simon Day a few years ago, but mostly it’s been writing my own music for my own bands. So I spend about half my time writing music in a completely different arena to Micro Moon, and that’s really satisfying creatively.
What are your plans for the future, do you have any plans to play live?
Isabel: well there was no plan initially, but if a few people want to see us live, that would be great.
Steve: Yes, I’d really like to! I’ve played more traditional gigs for years so doing it with Micro Moon would really be interesting, and we’re currently kicking some ideas around for the next record.
There are still a few copies left of ‘Figure in a Landscape’ on Mini CD at the Clay Pipe Music Bandcamp and Greedbag.