Flying Moon In Space release new single 'Optimist'

Flying Moon In Space release new single 'Optimist' 

Leipzig, Germany-based experimental group Flying Moon In Space are today releasing ‘Optimist’, the second single to be pulled from their incoming ‘ZWEI’ LP due out June 24th! Preceded by UK and EU tour dates through June/July, the six piece’s new album will arrive off the back of their highly-praised and sold-out self-titled debut album and a recent remix 12" that featured reworkings by Xiu Xiu, Suuns, A Place To Bury Strangers, Minami Deutsch, Camera and Warm Graves.

‘ZWEI’ sees the band’s shape-shifting experimentalism shot through with newfound pop sensibilities and ‘Optimist’ is a perfect case in point. On the follow-up to recent single ‘The Day The Sun Was Made’, huge, speaker-rattling synth pulses build into a lysergic, festival-ready psych pop anthem that buries itself deep into your head. Stream the track below and pre-order the LP here. 

On the track, vocalist Atom Parks says: “It’s been said that the last thing to die is hope. Sometimes it comes in the form of a projected apparition, or was it a friend? Remember the phone call before the private gallows are built and the noose is tied. Remember the wonder that can still exist in life."

 

 

On their self-titled debut, Flying Moon In Space honed in an improv-driven approach to their art that, when committed to wax, resulted in a maximalist melting pot of psych-pop, krautrock, techno and math-rock. This approach, however, was an extension of their live shows: huge, improvised performances that were known to last hours at a time. As they began work on the album’s follow-up whilst the world shut down around them, it’s of little surprise that the resulting ‘ZWEI’ LP sees Flying Moon In Space change course (but get no less creative with it.)  

“Just like many other artists we used the time without concerts for a creative process,” Henrik Rohde recalls: “This started digitally at first. We used a concept that everyone has actually known since childhood - a game we call ‘Stille Post’ here. You whisper something in someone's ear and after a while the content has evolved into something new. We started a circle and each of us got a different tone, recorded a single line each, set a tempo and let go until we received a complete track. This was actually the starting point of ZWEI.” Coming out of lockdown with an album’s worth of demos as a result, the band decamped to an old church deep in the forests of the Czech Republic and took the new ideas with them.

“We lived there all together for 3 weeks last summer and recorded our 2nd album. It was the perfect atmosphere to bring these ideas to life”, they reflect: “Musically it turned out to be somehow something completely new to us as we usually develop our ideas out of improvised sets we play live. As a result ZWEI has a more structured, poppy side compared to our debut, even though soundwise we opened up to more experimental layers - using synthesisers for the first time, as well as loops and field recordings of the church and surrounding forest. I guess generally you can say that the process behind this LP was manifold - testing out personal and aesthetic borders, and carrying on our idea of what Flying Moon In Space can be sonically.”