Hear Parra For Cuva & Trashlagoon’s uncategorizable “Hotel Moonlight”
From Planet Ujou, due out this Friday, March 5.
Photo by Anna Lock
It's tough to pigeonhole exactly what the Berlin-based composers Parra For Cuva and Trashlagoon are shooting for on their new collaboration "Hotel Moonlight." Kid A-era Radiohead comes to mind, and the song is certainly in the lineage of downcast, jazz-inspired electronic music that came up in that album's wake. Instead of pale imitation, though, "Hotel Moonlight" cruises at a sunlit altitude of its own emotional resonance, buoyed by groovy and emotional textures that further reveal themselves with each subsequent listen.
Here's what the two artists had to say about the song in a statement:
We got inspired by moving our studio to uncommon places like an Island in the northern sea and by locking ourselves up in a house deep in the woods outside of Berlin. Being all by ourselves, chopping woods to warm the cabin at night, eating fresh fish from the local market on the Island got us in a mood of expressing ourselves musically more freely. By creating an environment which was more pure and free of everyday distractions we found ourselves in an almost trance-like but highly focused state of mind in which we were able to discover our sound.
The song "Hotel Moonlight" was highly influenced by jazz music and the use of organic instruments rather than samples which are used more commonly in electronic music. We set ourselves the goal to tell more of a story cinematically which unfolds throughout the whole song than to create just a loop-based song. Basically it was our way to set a monument for our friendship, two people who met each other and became friends just because of their shared passion for music-making. Our goal was to create something sustainable which provides us access in the future to our way of perceiving life later when we’re old and maybe at another place in our lives.
The Planet Ujou EP from Parra for Cuva and Trashlagoon is out March 19.