Lunar Electric,
The TVD First Date

“Considering I’m only 23 and missed the era of classic vinyl by a longshot, LPs have had a huge, huge, huge influence on me. My dad had a pretty sizable collection growing up, classical and jazz, Blue Note stuff, Coltrane and Miles Davis. He had some prog stuff too, Close to The Edge and Yessongs. I remember hearing “Seen All Good People” for the first time on the old turntable in our living room. I must have been about 8 or 9. After iTunes though he got rid of most of it, save a few rare LP’s that got stashed away, to be rediscovered years later.”

“Obviously I grew up with CDs, then MP3s. The music I was listening to in junior high was only available in that format. I liked bands like Cream and Deep Purple, but again I didn’t own a record player or any LPs. When I was 15 my neighbors had a garage sale and I found a couple of records, The Wall and some others, so I bought them for a couple of bucks. A few months later I asked my mom for a turntable for my birthday. She thought it was a joke, so did my dad. They didn’t understand the appeal or the mythos surrounding vinyl when things seemed so convenient with digital.

Just the idea of it was exciting to me and the musicians I was hanging with. Vinyl was beginning to undergo its resurgence around that time and we wanted to hear the music we were obsessing over as it was intended I think. The first LP I bought at a record shop was Houses of the Holy, at Siren Records in Doylestown, PA. Then it was Sabbath, Masters of Reality at Princeton Record Exchange. My dad worked at the university and I used to hang out at that store a lot. They had great used vinyl. I had a lot of “emergencies” there on the credit card my parents gave me incase my car broke down!

I only had those two records for a while, I played them out. They really made an impression on me. The way Houses was structured like this great symphonic statement, all of the colors, and the artwork, the absolutely pulverizing sound on Sabbath. In fact, if you can somehow track down any material from my first couple of bands on the internet, we essentially re-wrote those records!

For the next couple of years I had a deep obsession and acquired quite a collection. There were so many stimulating albums, live records, compilations, things I would pull out of the 99 cent pin. Maybe a couple of tracks were playable, but it was something you’d be hard pressed to Google search. I had everything from Grand Funk Live and Revolver to Benny Goodman Live At Carnegie Hall. I listened to a lot of jazz, I found a box set of 120 recordings by Django Reinhardt and The Quintette du Hot Club de France with Stéphane Grappelli. Nobody else plays like that. I also had a French pressing of Bird on Verve. What a line up on that record. Buddy Rich and Monk, Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. I also discovered the Stones on vinyl. The first time I really listened, Sticky Fingers. I felt like I’d been jarred awake, you can definitely hear that on the new EP.

A year or so after I got my record player I was looking for something in the attic and found the handful of records my dad had saved when he liquidated his collection. There were a couple of incredible LPs in there. Frank Sinatra and Antonio Carlos Jobim on Reprise, recordings of Stravinsky in rehearsal, and a couple of records of Troubadour and Trobairitz music from the 13th and 14th centuries which I played out. That stuff really impacted me. All of these early, early secular popular songs by these traveling musicians. The first rock stars I think. I actually starting lifting melodies from that stuff which you can still hear on some of my stuff.

It was just a really exciting time for me as a musician. I would get totally lost in that universe. It was so immersive. Music is so engaging on vinyl, it’s something you interact with like a friend. It’s not wallpaper. I would even force myself to learn things on guitar off of the LP instead of slowing them down and transcribing a file on my computer. I wanted to work at it like the people I admired.

To wrap up, the Zeppelin records definitely had the most impact on what I set out to do as an artist. The music and the visuals joining to create a powerful mystique. They obsessed over that gatefold and the mysterious cover. I went out and bought a Tarot deck after I figured out that Page used The Hermit for that illustration. That stuff meant everything to me. Zeppelin was a vinyl band. And those records hit me hardest. Houses was the beginning but when I got Zeppelin IV, that changed everything. I had never heard anything that fierce. Man, when you drop the needle and it’s crackling and you turn it up until the receiver is frying, and the band comes in with that opening riff and Robert Plant is wailing all over it. That made me jump out of my skin. It still does.”
Dre DiMura

Lunar Electric’s “Auracle Bone Script” EP arrives in stores on June 23, 2017.

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