Moon Gravity is the recording project of Stas Neilyk from Sweden (and formerly of shoegaze/dream pop band Star Horse). Their debut release, a mini-album titled Antarctica, is coming out very soon on Silber Records, and today we’re happy to unveil the record in it’s entirity.
Neilyk describes the album as “a three track representation of the Antarctic polar night, starting at the onset of winter, as the sun disappears for a good couple of months and ending just as the first rays start climbing the horizon.” Perhaps unsurprisingly then, the predominant image on Antarctica is that of the cold. Moon Gravity use all of the tools in the shoegaze/ambient arsenal to conjure a dark and frozen wasteland, soaring glacial guitars and shimmering indistinct vocals, not unlike the aurora borealis that grace the cover.
‘Nightfall’ opens with a gentle melancholy, the levity shot through the track slowly dropping away, first into deep drone and then an eventual insulated hush, allowing the song to be transcendental in a way unique to last things. ‘Snow Storm’ forms from within this blanketed quiet, the ebbing hum punctuated by echoing noise like some vast geological force creeping over a barren land. The intensity gathers over the mammoth play-length, becoming loud and mean and awesome in the way of natural phenomena too big for us to fully grasp. An insistent drum beat kicks in around the eight-minute mark as the nebulous atmosphere shrinks inwards and a sense of forward motion returns, dragging the release through to the closer ‘Purpling’, an airy number of celestial swirls and luminous peaks. The finale of the entire thing has planetary weight, slow and huge and glorious, operating according to strict laws yet appearing somehow above them, as though some God could not resist this part of his jigsaw being cast with wonder.
Artwork by Rebecka Katalina Johansson