File next to: Faust, Hawkwind, Neu!
Purveyors of: Kosmiche blasts, space rock, krautrock

Playing: WL 598 a.k.a. "M FOR..." Wednesday May 7 @ The Garrison

Moonwood are a ballooning mushroom of space glitter and trance radiation. Titanium riffs chug along beside measured percussion, pulsing loudly into the outersphere. Wavelength’s Adam Bradley sent telepathic messages to the bands Jakob "Arachnidiscs" Rehlinger and this was the result.

Do you folks consider yourself a Krautrock project or is the term ultimately unimportant?

More "space-rock" than Krautrock, really. We have some pretty blatant "motorik" and "kosmische" elements, but we're also just as much in the Pink Floyd and Hawkwind vein as Neu! and Faust. We're definitely in the Anglo-American classic psychedelic end of the Kraut spectrum.

Can you tell me a little bit about the growth of Moonwood from being a solo project into what it's now become?

Well, it's complex and organic and I don't know how interesting this is going to be... Moonwood was my acid-folk, mostly acoustic, solo-project for a couple years, starting somewhere in the 2007 range. Then after I put out the River Ghosts LP I figured I should really try and play live, so I got Jacqueline Noire to play some bells and flutes and wordless vocals. But then I started adding drum machine and she started playing synth.

Meanwhile I put out a one-off digital EP of Krautrock jams called Trans Lunar Express, which ended up being more popular than anything else Moonwood had done. So I recorded Trans Martian Express and offered it to Pleasence Records, who actually agreed to put it out. At that point, I decided that the live version of Moonwood, with Jacqueline, should start playing some of these Krautrock jams along with the improv psych-tribal drone folk thing we'd been doing.

I was using a looper to fill out the sound as a duo and after a year of that not really working out, we stumbled across the rhythm section of Luca and Matt. So now Moonwood is the four of us. A proper band. But not just the Kraut vibe, also going back to the more improv, more organic roots. And what I used to do in Moonwood, solo, is kind of what I'm now doing with my other project BABEL. If it's just me, it's BABEL, if it's the four of us, it's Moonwood. That's the condensed version.

You run the inimitable experimental (et al) label Arachnidiscs. What was the genesis of that project?

I started a tape label in high school called No Love, basically to put out my demo tapes. When CD-Rs came out, I changed the name to Arachnidiscs because I wanted the word "disc" in there and I love portmanteaus. Really, at the time, I just needed an outlet for BABEL. Eventually I started putting out my friends' stuff to make the label seem legit and not a total private press vanity label. Then strangers started to buy my ruse and began to say "yes" instead of "uh, whatever, I don't think so," when I asked to put their stuff out.

Now, people come to me and I don't have to go looking for bands. I had four bands approach me this week, in fact. It's getting to the point when I have to pick and choose projects instead of being able to put out every single release I'm interested in. I have to write more rejection letters now, which is always awkward, but I also feel more justified when I do so.

Four of your recent album covers all feature a cool looking highway leading into the horizon with various planets looming in the distance. Four others with variously arranged skulls. What's behind these themes?

The highway ones are the specifically Krautrock-oriented releases. It's a riff on the blue and white Kraftwerk Autobahn album cover, obviously. The skulls were for the improv acid-folk recordings and came out of my Taoist beliefs. Accepting death within life and life within death and that kind of thing. Or something. I'm not sure, exactly, but it felt right.

But also, though Moonwood's never been heavy metal per se, skulls are pretty damn "metal" and you can't argue with that. The cover for our next LP Desert Ghosts, which combines the two approaches musically, is going to combine the two motifs. As a transition or saying goodnight to both. The highway will be heading towards a skull instead of a planet.

MOONWOOD: TRANS MARTIAN DISKO from Arachnidiscs Recordings on Vimeo.

Yourself and Jacqueline live in New Toronto, straddling the line out west between Mimico and Long Branch. It's not THAT far out, but how do you find the experience of being involved in the downtown live music scene and such while not living in the thick of it?

It's tough. It's hard to be supportive of people who've done us favours and to be "seen by the scene" so to speak. Which is actually really important. It's easy to be out of sight, out of mind. Probably 8 out of 10 shows we go to, we're playing at. Which isn't a great look.

We also have to turn down some mid-week shows just because we have to get up for work early on Thursday morning or whatever and if we could just slink back to a downtown apartment, maybe that'd be different. Maybe it'd be feasible. Or probably not. We're not very rock'n'roll. We're introverts with cats. But there's also advantages too, of course. Like having room for jamming without noise complaints. And having a valid excuse to not go to five shows a week.

What do you think of the band Mimico?

Jacqueline is livid they took the name and none of them, to our knowledge, live down here. Livid like a black guy from Harlem might be if a bunch of white upper-middle class kids from California called themselves "Harlem." She grew up here and it's a real blood-feud issue with her. Personally, I get more upset by how good their last tape was. That, along with Fresh Snow's LP, had me going back and reworking Desert Ghosts over and over again. Those two recordings definitely pushed me to make our record better.

If you had to describe your music as a mythical beast from Dungeons and Dragons, which would it be? You can pick from this list if you like:(http://io9.com/the-10-most-memorable-dungeons-dragons-monsters-1326074030)

Clearly we are the Mind Flayer. Just because if you're playing psychedelic music and not flaying minds, maybe you're in the wrong field.

Final joke: What do you call a bad Krautrock band?

Cluster. I don't get Cluster.

CAN'T!

Oh, I see what you did there. That's a good one too.

Moonwood play Wavelength and M for Montreal's joint CMW showcase at 9PM Wednesday May 7 at the Garrison.