.png)
Luna Waves – is Bedford-based multi-instrumentalist Rob Muir. LW is dark, dreamy, ethereal and atmospheric psych rock/dream pop.
LW is inspired by artists like Smashing Pumpkins, Pink Floyd, Tame Impala, Kurt Vile, Beach House, Gemma Hayes, Jeff Buckley, Sunflower Bean and Radiohead.
Sophomore album Blood Moon is due for release in 2022.
We have had the pleasure of speaking with him and this has been the result.
Can you tell us a little about your experience? Where are you from / how did you get into music?
I am currently living in Bedford in the UK (50 miles north of London). I first got into music in a more serious way when I was around 11 or 12 years old. For most people who have similar musical tastes to me that I have spoken to, there’s usually a lightning bolt moment. For me, that was in the early nineties when I heard my best friends brother faintly playing guitar in his bedroom. He was playing the main riff to Nirvana’s Come As You Are and I was entranced by that sound. I went into Manchester with my friend, near where I was living at the time and bought the single the very next day!
How is your sound evolving? What artists and genres do you enjoy mixing right now?
I hope it’s evolving! That’s definitely something that I try to reach for when making new music. I am a child of the 90’s and I grew up listening to a lot of great Alternative Rock and Grunge bands (Pearl Jam, Smashing Pumpkins, Nirvana, Soundgarden, Radiohead, Jeff Buckley) but I have always been interested in a wide range of music from Trip-Hop to Pyschedelia. More recently I have found my taste shifting to more synth pop/dream pop/psych rock style artists. Tame Impala, Beach House, Kurt Vile, Washed Out, King Buffalo, Melody’s Echo Chamber are a few of the artists that have inspired my recent projects.
How do you feel that your music influences or impacts your listeners?
That’s a great question but it’s hard to answer, I would love to know first hand how my music influences or impacts my listeners. I would hope being a solo artist/multi-instrumentalist and a DIY musician that I can inspire people to produce music themselves, I am a firm believer that you can create great music on your own in a bedroom studio. Although collaboration and other people’s input is also great and very valuable.
What projects are you working on right now? What can you tell us about your last job?
I have been working on my 2nd album Blood Moon on and off for around 2 years. I abandoned a lot of material that would have originally been my 2nd album and started from scratch. I ended up with something like 50 songs, so I am going to follow the release of Blood Moon with a B-sides album in 2022 with all the songs that didn’t make it on to Blood Moon. I am currently finishing off and tidying up those tracks in my home studio.
Where are you and what have you been doing now?
I am based in Bedford and I am fitting in my Luna Waves music projects around my day job as a Graphic Designer. There are not enough hours in the day sometimes but music is my passion and I love to be creative.
Has that sound changed a lot in recent years? What is your musical criteria?
I have been in quite a few rock bands in my local scene over the years and when I first started creating music as Luna Waves in 2017, I was a little bit apprehensive about putting my music out in the world. I have been playing guitar and writing songs since I was thirteen but I have always been in bands and had band mates to help me/fall back on. When I released my debut album Seafoam Dream as Luna Waves in 2018 it felt liberating but it also felt like I was pulling the safety net away, so I played it a little safe on that album and stuck to more traditional folk rock/singer-songwriter territory. In 2019 I started to piece together a modest home studio and taught myself how to use DAWs Reaper and now Ableton Live. This has really given me the freedom to experiment with sounds and how I approach writing my music. I tend to build songs from loops and keep adding layers, rather than writing a whole song on a guitar and fitting parts around that. My musical criteria is pretty simple, as long as I like listening to it while I’m making it, it’s good enough for me.
Do you feel safe now to play a more experimental sound?
Absolutely! I really want to push myself with each new release and try different sounds and approaches to song writing. The cliché is that the 2nd album is the hardest, the sophomore slump! So hopefully album number 3 will be my most experimental yet! I am already working on some new tracks for that! I’d love to do an album one day when I put the guitar down completely and don’t fall back on it at all.
We all know that the digital revolution has affected sales, but has it affected creativity?
From personal experience I can only say that the digital revolution has aided and increased my creativity. Without it I would not have had access to affordable synth sounds/plugins and software. Also Youtube tutorials and things like that didn’t exist when I was younger and learning how to create my own music, so it’s a great tool and it has sped up that process for me. I think the key is blending it with more organic elements and not to get too caught up in the digital world, the real world is still where I feel more comfortable. With all that said, you really can't beat vintage gear and analog sounds/equipment for that special vibe and character you get from them, I just wish I could afford to pay for it!
Can you tell us what your present and future projects are?
I am working on an album of B-sides of the songs that I couldn’t squeeze onto Blood Moon, 16 felt like more than enough! It is provisionally titled B(lood) Sides and I am hoping to put that out in the summer of 2022. Then I will be onto album 3 or 4 depending on how you look at it. I have also recently joined a new Heavy Psych Rock band called Hyper Tides.
