REVIEWS
STAR REVIEW
It's wrong to have favourites, but sometimes...
Mick Mercer's Panache, 21/05/24
Glorious Goth mystery from delightful duo:
Review of Lunar Paths - Glimmer
To say that we were ecstatic about this review is something of an understatement. Not only is it a glowing endorsement of our debut album, Glimmer; it's written by the one and only Mick Mercer, postpunk pioneer, godfather of goth and all round genius of the darkwave scene.
"Challenging, involving modern Goth, with a free spirit of adventurous exploration... immediate, sometimes weird, wholly captivating... the best percussive underlay you’ll find in the scene today... every element is a tiny component fused into the beautiful bigger picture... shudders in a cool Creatures-ish swirl, vocals undulating craftily, the music circling and crashing... quietly devious... hypnotic... sadness and grandeur intermingled."
"There’s so much here you can’t get bored. You also unravel more with each listen."
"Genuinely special."
Read the entire review here.
darkscene.org
Imagine our delight when we stumbled upon this!
The illustrious darkscene.org has seen fit to award us with four stars, for our first EP, Fuse AND for our debut album, Glimmer . We are placed alongside some genuine legends, and we are so proud and happy to be here. They compare us to some really interesting artists, too.
Nocturnazine 6, October 2024
We were just thrilled by what Nocturnazine have done for us. Not only did they write the most fantastic review of Cicada; they even made a little promo video, incorporating some of their own very cool images. 🖤 You can see the video on our Facebook page - here's a still from it - and read the entire review in Nocturnazine “05: Syndicate." Click the picture for the link.
"Lunar Paths have written a song about an insect I have always found to be fascinating—the cicada. They’ve even utilized audio samplings of them in their recordings before. However, they really went all out here. I’ve included some of my own photography and footage for this promo video... Do yourselves a favor and read the full lyrics and this song’s back story on their Bandcamp page! 🦇 Remember that hearing positive feedback means absolutely everything to artists and creatives alike—so let’s please hear from YOU! 🦇🖤 Give Lunar Paths a follow, listen, and download."
Nocturnazine 5, August 2024
SOUND ON! 🖤
It’s official! Lifesong, is a “mesmerizing dreamscape” of postpunk darkwave splendour.
Find Nocturnazine here, and on BandCamp to see their collection; we’re in it!
White Light White Heat, 29/03/24
WL//WH Video of the Day:
LUNAR PATHS 'A Star at Dawn' (Full Length Video)
How fabulous! Our second award of 'Video of the Day' from the esteemed online publication White Light White Heat! It's especially pleasing because we shoot our videos on a phone camera and edit on free edit suites!
“A Star at Dawn” is an uplifting poem about rising above hate and adversity, that staggers through the hypnotic drive of thudding percussive patterns, amidst a compelling whirlwind of distant droning ‘fog horn’ blows, brittle metallic shakes, dry exotic strings and vibrant fluting Middle Eastern melodies to surround lush crystalline vocals with rich heartfelt harmonies of unity and strength.
Symbolic visuals filmed by John Hudson place an evocative East Coast beach in England behind a breathtaking performance by Diane Dubois as she wears elegant, flowing, black-to-red garments. An array of suggestive editing techniques such as computer ‘hand drawn’ embellishments, strategic use of color, and transformative overlays give birth to Lunar Path’s epic vision."
Read the entire review here.
ReGen, 14/03/24
Lunar Paths - Glimmer
Not a review, but an announcement of our forthcoming album, and we can't express just how thrilled we are to be on the radar of an esteemed publication like ReGen!
"Following up on the 2022 Fuse EP, the pair has announced a full-length album, titled Glimmer, which builds on the two musicians’ collective histories in the ’80s post-punk and goth/rock scenes; comprised of nine tracks the band has been steadily revealing over the last two years, Glimmer also presents a more eclectic stylistic range that draws inspiration from current modes – 'the music scene has changed and developed in so many exciting and unforeseeable ways', with the songs expressing the duo’s adventurous, yet distinctly darkwave spirit."
Read the entire piece here.
Turn Up the Volume, 19/02/24
Lunar Paths, feat. Ben Keaton - New
We are delighted to have been selected for TURN UP THE VOLUME’s Jukebox 2024, alongside some truly huge talent, and thrilled by their lovely review of New. 🖤 We are so happy to be on the radar of this excellent publication!
"Intriguing stuff!"
"...a psychedelic and darkwavish slo-mo trip with a trancy effect...glowing, shadowy The Cure-like guitar radiance... hallucinatory female/male vocals...an eerie experience."
Read the entire review here.
Onyx Music Reviews, 05/02/24
Lunar Paths - Halo
Again, the erudite Adele Sinnamon has thrilled us with her kind words:
"...Lunar Paths might just be dark angels..."
"...the experimental quality often leaves me feeling that this is what The Creatures could have sounded like if they had pursued that creative well.."
Read the entire review here.
White Light White Heat, 23/01/24
WL//WH Video of the Day: LUNAR PATHS 'Halo' (Full Length Video)
To say that we were ecstatic is putting it mildly. Our first ever attempt at making a full length video has been named Video of the Day by the celebrated online publication White Light White Heat! Not too shabby for a video shot on a phone and edited on a free online edit suite!
Here’s what ace journalist Catherine Gillette said:
"Haunting, rousing, and instinctual..."
“...Halo is a powerful composition of crackling primal atmospheric energy that staggers through ominously cyclical tight tribal percussions and swooshing FXs, lacerated by jagged, shrieking distortions, that resonate harshly around evocative vocals, layering urgent and whispered spoken words with dramatic cries, to build tension and release pain, into a dark, merciless void. DIY black and white visuals cast a fuzzy haze of low light vision over a bewitching performance by Diane Dubois to sync with the nightmarish theme of the soundtrack. Transformative lights and shadows combine with intense facial expressions, symbolic hand gestures, and trippy asymmetric editing to trigger a nocturnal perception along with surreal flows of distorted motion.”
Read the entire review here.
Onyx Music Reviews, 28/12/23
Lunar Paths - The Ship Song
We are again indebted to the tireless and profoundly wise Adele Sinnamon for her review of our cover of The Ship Song, by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.
"...mellow and smooth with an incandescent dark beauty..."
"Lunar Paths has taken this classic track and given it their experimental, electronic sheen."
"Walking in Cave’s deep, sonorous vocal footprints is no easy task, but female lead singer, Diane Dubois, pulls it off with great aplomb. The synths in the background are a constant, swelling and dropping, voluptuous in their role and the live drums of Kevin Hunter are an excellent accompaniment."
Read the entire review here.
Onyx Music Reviews, 11/09/23
Lunar Paths - BURN
Huge thanks go once again to the ever vigilant and eternally fabulous Adele Sinnamon for her review of our August 2023 release, BURN.
"An idea about the world on fire has given us a track that can set you ablaze."
"...The looping and abrasive electronic samples and synths set the background for the echoing vocals of Dubois, as she goes from whispers to full throated and delicious croons. All the while, Hunter’s rhythms set the pace ranging from tribal through to thumping out the driving time signature. I can’t deny that this Lunar Path track, while very experimental in nature, definitely reminds me very much of early Siouxsie and the Banshees, who also were extraordinary pioneers of post-punk music."
Read the entire review here.
Indieferrential, 06/08/23
Introducing Lunar Paths
Well, this is very nice! Indiefferential invited us to do a little interview. The interview is available online via the link below, and it was also included in the printed magazine version, available worldwide.
Read the entire review here.
Onyx Music Reviews, 18/02/23
Lunar Paths - Yeraz
We were very pleased with Onyx's review of our early 2023 release, Yeraz.
"...There is a mix and flow of both traditional and modern drone in the form of drums ... that creates a hypnotic undertow, giving a platform to the vocals, piano snippets and the duduk... The duduk is the a star of the track, with its low and warm tones that conjure visions of ancient peoples and meandering waterways. It is mesmerising while the even lower tones beneath take on the sound of deep prayers in a temple. The vocals snake through the ethereal dreamtime.
"Join the the Lunar Paths new world order with Yeraz."
Read the entire review here.
Sound Streams,
5-12/02/23
Though not a review or an interview, what the tireless, dedicated and profoundly knowledgeable Pasquale Meta has done for Lunar Paths on his Sound Streams Facebook page is certainly a huge vote of confidence in us, and is absolutely deserving of a place on this page. Having shared and posted each and every one of our releases, he went on to make us the featured cover artistes on Sound Streams for an entire week, and again he posted one of our releases on every single day. We are as humbled as we are deeply grateful.
Check out this remarkable online journal here.
Onyx Music Reviews, 16/12/22
Lunar Paths - Shine
We were thrilled to bits with Onyx's review of our September 2022 release, Shine.
"...a crunchy, broken glass like texture in the rhythm...The vocals are beautifully clean and clipped, holding your attention, until they drift into another dimension, sliding you with them...Lush, charismatic and experimental...this track reminds me a lot of Siouxsie And The Banshees, around the time of A Kiss In The Dreamhouse...Shine is possibly my favourite Lunar Paths’ track to date."
Read the entire review here.
Onyx Music Reviews, 28/11/22
Lunar Paths – Fuse EP
This review of our debut EP Fuse contains a couple of factual errors, but, hey... when they say such nice things, who cares! Some highlights:
"ethereal and beautiful, slowly consuming your will to escape with siren song"
"monumental and yet incredibly fragile"
"like a tether to previous era that glitches and morphs with the electronics, unable to remain in the past, and then there is that magnificent guitar"
"though Lunar Paths has a modern sound, I hear a harkening back to the 4AD period, tinges of Cocteau Twins and Dead Can Dance merged together, on the experimental edge. They are plumbing the depths of your soul, evoking dreams of shores yet to be touched."
Read the entire review here.
A&R Factory, 15/11/22
We were utterly delighted to get such an incisive, thoughtful and thoroughly stimulating interview with the renowned and endlessly supportive A&R Factory.
You can read it in full here, and here:
LUNAR PATHS DISSECTED THE CREATIVITY AND COMPASSIONATE CONSCIOUSNESS OF THEIR DARKWAVE POST-PUNK DEBUT EP, FUSE, IN AN A&R FACTORY INTERVIEW As the anticipation for Lunar Path’s debut EP was kicking in, A&R Factory caught up with the internationally scattered duo to discuss their poetic and philosophical lyrical themes and take on creativity in the digital age as we tried to contain our excitement that bubbled around speaking to the former members of the iconic UK acts, Cold Dance and Skeletal Family. Lunar Paths, welcome back to A&R Factory; we loved getting stuck into the dark ethereal alchemy in your single, Rise; does it set the tone of what is to come via your debut EP? We were so thrilled with your review of Rise. Thank you! “Lunar Paths made the Bela Lugosi’s Dead of this era with Rise.” I mean, WOW. That blew us away! Rise is one of the five tracks on the EP, Fuse, but does it set the tone? Well, the release of the EP marks the occasion of Lunar Paths’ first birthday, and frankly, we are still in the process of discovering who we are and what our tone is! For sure, all of the tracks hang together really well; they are all driven by the percussion, they all have a fairly atypical song structure and mysterious vocal, and they all use an eclectic array of unusual instruments and distorted samples, so you could say that, with its rolling beat, haunting vocal, gamelan and warped Cretan lyra, Rise is fairly representative of what we do. Two of the tracks on the EP have a faster tempo, and one of these is even a little bit playful, but we do seem to be leaning towards an enigmatic, ethereal, and evocative, atmospheric sound. Releasing music in 2022 as opposed to when you were together making music in the 80s in the bands Cold Dance and Skeletal Family must be a vastly different experience – before you even consider the distance between your bases in America and Europe. How does it feel to be creatively reunited in the digital age of music? It’s absolutely wonderful! We have said so many times how, if, back in the day, we had had the digital and virtual gear that we have at our disposal now, we could have done such a lot to realise our musical aspirations, both in terms of recording and playing live. We were early adopters of electronic drums, drum machines and sequencers, and they always created a bit of a stir onstage, but back then, the only bands that could afford the really cutting-edge digital technology had serious financial backing. Similarly, recording and releasing on vinyl was such a big deal, in terms of time, effort and expense. Planning things to the minute so that you didn’t waste valuable time in the recording studio, there was much less room for experimentation, and it allowed for just a tiny margin of error. Now, it’s possible to take massive creative risks, take your time and really play around with ideas—and, of course, if you want a gamelan, you don’t have to travel all the way to Indonesia! The idea, too, of making videos to accompany and promote the music was beyond the wildest dreams of most bands back then, but now, thanks to platforms like Instagram, YouTube and TikTok, it’s something that is within the grasp of pretty much anyone with a smartphone. The synergy between you is palpable for sure. How would you say you bring the best out in each other creatively? I don’t think that we have ever responded to each other’s ideas in any way other than positively. That’s not because we are easily pleased, either! We are both incredibly driven, both perfectionists and we each set ourselves very high standards. It helps that we have always been on the same wavelength: though we were not necessarily tuned into the exact same stuff, we are always receptive to new and exciting material. Chatting to each other for the first time in decades about music, it was astounding to discover how many bands we had developed a common liking for over our years apart. There were also equally large areas of music and culture that remained a complete mystery to one of us while the other had discovered, explored and completely fallen in love with it—but none of it was ever boring. I think that the most important thing is that we are both still very curious, open, receptive and adventurous, when it comes to what we make and what we consume. Because we are so much on the same page, and also so very open to new ideas, working together feels easy. We never have to explain anything to each other or have lengthy debates about what should happen in a track; one of us brings something to the table, and it’s immediately obvious to the other one why it’s a great idea. Trust plays a huge part in what we do. We are never afraid to share our ideas with each other, plus, because of this mutual trust that we have, we can simply go with an idea, see where it leads us, and it is usually one that works. What were the biggest challenges of creating music in different continents and different time zones? Getting some sleep! When one of us is ready to chat, it’s usually four in the morning for the other one, but it’s just all too exciting and too much fun to resist having really lengthy conversations, regardless of the time of day. When you have this compulsion to make music, and you find someone who you so totally gel with creatively, being a bit sleep deprived the next day is such a small price to pay. Being on different continents wasn’t that big a deal either, as I think a lot of us learned during the pandemic how working together remotely was actually more than possible. At first, we were concerned that, without a shared access to the same DAW, we wouldn’t be able to collaborate at all, but we quickly found ways around that. Wave files fly across the Atlantic at the speed of light, they get imported into a project, the project gets pinged back across the Atlantic, and so on. Finding solutions to the challenges just added to the fun and to the sense of achievement. Have your music influences stayed the same, or are there contemporary darkwave outfits fuelling your inspiration lately? Not just darkwave, and not just contemporary; we like a huge amount of wildly disparate stuff, across a range of genres, encompassing music being made today to music dating back hundreds of years. To give you an idea, we like: Avalanches, KLF, Dengue Dengue Dengue, The Creatures, Gang of Four, Boards of Canada, Pixies, Bjork, Killing Joke, Alessandro Striggio, Ministry, First Nation music, Joy Division, Yard Act, Roza Eskenazi, Idles, Skinny Puppy, The Veldt, Portishead, Bob Vylan, Radiohead, Underworld, Sun’s Signature, Chemical Brothers, The Streets, tAngerinecAt, Legendary Pink Dots, Coil, Basil Kirchin, Fred again.., Marxman, Earthlings, She Wants Revenge, Young Gods, NuKreative, The Soft Moon… and that’s just the tip of a massive iceberg. We could go on! What lyrical themes are explored in the EP? The name of the EP, Fuse, echoes what Lunar Paths do, bringing different elements together and uniting them, and it also evokes something that triggers an explosion or reaction. It also suggests being driven by an unstoppable and mysterious energy, as in “the force that through the green fuse drives the flower,” from the poem by Dylan Thomas. Our lyrical themes are diverse overall, but some of the songs on this EP are political—Lunar Paths lean to the left—so Rise evokes a weary person dragging themselves to work every day, self-medicating every night, and asks how long they are prepared to put up with lousy pay and conditions. Dérive was inspired by the writings of the Situationists, who suggested that, instead of going shopping or going to work, setting out on long, purposeless walks through the city that you live in could be a subversive act, especially if you keep your eyes open and think about all that you see. Alttahilili means ‘lullaby’, and it was the result of seeing harrowing pictures of refugee families shivering in the snow and from the idea that, wherever we come from, we all sing to our children to comfort them. MetaGoth#1 has hardly any lyrics at all, apart from a clip from a 1980s film about the evils of capitalism, along with a Siouxsie-ish refrain, all parts of the song being a playful nod to our post-punk roots. Lo Oa Soa was the result of an experiment to see what would happen if we wrote a fairly conventional song, then learned to sing it backwards! When we discovered that Lo Oa Soa actually means ‘you are dead’ in Sesotho, it appealed to the old goth in us! On every occasion, the music precedes the lyrics. So, for example, the drums in what eventually became Dérive sounded very urban, full of clashing trashcans and gunshots, so we knew that it was going to be about cities. The circling drone of Rise evoked a sense of weary, repeated activity, like a vicious circle, and Alttahilili sounds like the wind on a bitterly cold winter night. MetaGoth#1 is full of sounds from and after the post-punk era, and Lo Oa Soa sounds like a crazy, exciting journey into the unknown. What’s next for Lunar Paths? When we started this venture, all that we wanted was to make some music and have people hear it. That’s already happening, but we’d like to make more music and get heard by more people. We’ve been on SoundCloud for several months, where we recently got just under 20,000 streams of our latest track, Shine, and this inspired us to sign up to Distrokid, in the hope that being across all the major streaming platforms will help grow our audience and get us more airplay. Our immediate plans are to release the rest of our back catalogue, together with some new songs, in the form of another EP in 2023. We both miss live performance, so a live stream could be fun to try. We’ve even talked wistfully about touring, and, though the vast geographical distance between us makes rehearsing tricky (to say the least!), it’s not beyond the realm of the possible. Nothing is. Did either of us ever think, this time last year, that we would be chatting to A&R Factory about our debut EP? Never say never! Interview by Amelia Vandergast
A&R Factory, 24/7/22
Ascend with Lunar Paths' Dark Indie Avant Garde Single, Rise
"Any artist with a track titled MetaGoth#1 in their discography has my immediate perpetual attention; with their latest single, Rise, Lunar Paths went even heavier on the dark haunting beguile...
"The layered and looped percussive patterns and eastern rhythms steadily inch you into the heart of the psychedelically tribalistic feat of ethereal indie, which laments the lack of soul in our era that makes mental resilience a necessity; lest you be swept away by the dystopian waves. Rise acts as an all too efficacious anchor, with its glimmers of hope in the shimmering echoes...
"The transatlantic duo made the Bela Lugosi’s Dead of this era with Rise. It’s not the darkwave you’ve ridden the crux of before; it’s the ethereal Avant Garde sanctity we sorely need."
Read the entire review here.
Onyx Music Reviews, 7/7/22
Lunar Paths – Rise
"Lunar Paths is a collaboration between two musicians who were originally involved in the UK gothic scene in the 80s. Both Diane Dubois and Kevin Hunter were in the band Cold Dance, and Hunter in Skeletal Family until they broke up in 1986. After losing contact and ending up in different time zones, they rediscovered their friendship and so started a new musical project.
"There are loops and subverted sounds in the electronic aether, which take on an almost Middle Eastern atmosphere, The vocals sigh and take you on the journey to another exotic realm, while Dubois’s sensuous singing beguiles your senses. The duo’s experimentation with recordings and synths has become this wonderful amalgamation of styles and Lunar Paths’ music definitely tickles those dark sweet spots in your mind."
Read the entire review here.