Luma Fade - Lunar Decay (self-released)

Dream Pop for the Apocalypse. That’s what the band’s tagline says; as soundbites go, it is perfect. Not only is it intriguing enough for any discerning music fan or sci-fi aficionado, or in my case, both, to want to explore and know more, but it also sums up the music perfectly.

Lunar Decay is an album built from lush threads, hazy harmonies, ambient textures, and cinematic sonic urges. It often feels like the soundtrack to a sci-fi movie, a dystopian drift of sounds, an aria for the armageddon, post-apocalyptic-post-pop as much as it does a series of songs, and I suppose that makes it a concept album of sorts. But forget all associations of such album formats with the prog-rockers of old; this is not an album built on excess but quite the opposite.

But for every song like “Nova Sunshine,” which seems to drift along on the sonic winds, lush and loose, calm and restrained, there is one such as “Monsoon Morning” that is brooding and bass-driven, almost gothic-infused in its sense of menace. For every “Winter Warming,” which crawls snake-like towards the listener, there are tracks like “Dimmer Summer,” which ebbs and flows between intensity and tranquility.

This is music as a prophecy. It describes one possible future, it is music which captures the post-cataclysmic landscapes of the imagination as soundscapes for the senses. It is pretty telling that more and more music is being made that talks about what our future might look like, either here on a planet transformed beyond recognition, or beyond it, in a galactic elsewhere. When taken together, such music can be seen as a collective call for understanding, awareness, and action, a sonic love letter to the only planet we have ever called home, and a warning of what might lay in our future.

Yes, Lunar Decay is excellent music when taken at face value. But dig a little deeper, think through the subliminal message being delivered, and that music becomes a much more powerful, poignant, and timely piece of work than it might first have seemed.

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