- Label: 'Fruits de Mer Records/Inflatable Tarmac Records'
- Genre: 'Ambient'
- Release Date: '27th January 2024'- Catalogue No: 'FOTF76/SB04'
Our Rating:
The album title comes from the word for a natural phenomenon in which a large group of starlings fly in unison as a collective response to a common danger. Moon Goose (geese?) don’t perform murmurations.
This is Moon Goose's 4th album, written, recorded and mixed in 2023. The five-piece band are located in Hay On Wye, the famous book town on the Welsh border.
According to the band’s own website (never a wholly reliable source of information) their sound is akin to ”a dragon colliding with an asteroid.”
Online readers are also advised that ”the eight tracks featured in Murmurations were whispered by the Barn to the band on dark, icy nights, disturbing the quietness of the Welsh countryside with unrestricted turmoil.” One might reasonably conclude from this that there’s something in the water!
Five of the tracks are a meandering space-is-the-place style instrumentals. The opening number, 2023 AD, is, however, a kind of post-lockdown lament with spoken word vocals which provide some clues to the mental state of the performers. The lyrics suggest a degree of frustration at recent global events; e.g. “The great reset came and went/Work from home stare at walls.”
Titles like Cloud of Eyeballs and Compressed Hairstyles of the New Settlers, give affair warning of the eccentric content elsewhere. Psych-rooted kraut rock is without question a primary inspiration.
Despite the enigmatic content and general strangeness, the freak out factor is relatively chilled so although you won’t hear the album on Radio 2, it might function well as alternative easy listening.
