Moonshake - Eva Luna [Deluxe Edition - Blue Coloured vinyl 2LP]

Format: Coloured Vinyl 2LP
Catalogue No.: PURE351LPX
Barcode: 0644918035107
Release Date: 06 Oct 2023
Genre: Indie/Alternative

 Too Pure are excited to get Moonshake’s debut album, ‘Eva Luna’, back in print, releasing a deluxe edition, re-mastered from analogue 1Ú2” tape, on blue double vinyl.
 The reissue contains 19 tracks - the album’s original 10, the non-LP three-song single ‘Secondhand Clothes’, the two B-sides from the ‘Beautiful Pigeon’ single and four tracks from a November 1992 John Peel session. The release also includes an 8-page full-colour booklet.
 Moonshake were formed in 1991 by David Callahan (vocals, guitars, samplers), formerly of The Wolfhounds, and New York musician Margaret Fiedler (vocals, guitars, samplers). Callahan and Fiedler recorded a demo for Creation Records, and were joined by John Frenett (bass) and Miguel Morland (‘Mig’, drums) to record and release the ‘First EP’ for Creation in 1991.
 They took their name from a 1973 single by Can. Both Fiedler and Callahan wrote songs, and they would (generally) sing on the songs that they wrote. Their output of shared inspiration produced wildly different results - Can, PIL, Kraftwerk, MBV and Erik B & Rakim were a melting pot that made Moonshake somewhat uncategorizable, and as Margaret noted in an interview, “Moonshake was a collision - it was supposed to be a collision.”
 Their debut album, ‘Eva Luna’, took its name from a novel by Chilean author Isabel Allende, and the tracks on it are split evenly between the two songwriters. Callahan’s songs are somewhat angry, dissonant, post-punk affairs, while Fiedler’s are just as angular, but her quieter sometimes near whispered vocals compliment her writing partner’s equally. Producer / engineer Guy Fixsen, fresh from his work on My Bloody Valentine’s ‘Loveless’, was instrumental in making the album cohesive.
 This album has been critically revisited often since its original release, with Tiny Mix Tapes describing their sound as “an updated take on Can and Public Image Limited’s rhythmic propulsion with noisier guitar work and a predilection for sampling influenced by The Young Gods.” Last year, in a wonderfully long piece to celebrate the album’s 30th anniversary, Louder Than War wrote that they were blown away by the album’s “utterly spellbinding, dizzyingly genre-defying approach at articulating explicitly the sound of a city in the throes of urban psychosis and derangement... ‘Eva Luna’ really is one hell of a ground-breaking record, and it stands resolutely alone among all of the albums released in 1992 as no other band has managed to create anything remotely similar before or since. It really is a unique album with few equals.”
 In 1993, the original incarnation of the band split up, and Margaret Fiedler and John Frenett went on to form Laika with Guy Fixsen. Callahan and Morland continued on with guest musicians, with Callahan ultimately
remaining the band’s sole original member. Moonshake ended in 1997 but their legacy is indisputable.

Tracklisting
City Poison
Sweetheart
Spaceship Earth
Beautiful Pigeon
Mugshot Heroine
Wanderlust
Tar Baby
Seen & Not Heard
Bleach & Salt Water
Little Thing
Secondhand Clothes
Blister
Beeside
Home Survival Kit
Drop In The Ocean
Coming (BBC Radio 1 John
Peel Session)
Beautiful Pigeon (BBC Radio 1 John Peel Session)
Sweetheart (BBC Radio 1 John Peel Session)
Mugshot Heroine (BBC Radio 1 John Peel Session)