Mooncake-Lagrange Points [2008]

Since we can’t just review bands from Austin, TX, our latest pick lifts us all the way to the Russian Federation’s Moscow for Mooncake and their latest instrumental release, Lagrange Points. It’s almost too obvious a choice for a place called The Astronaut Farm, but get over it.

Since I am an astronaut, I already knew the album's title references Italian-French math wiz Josef Lagrange's “Lagrange points." The points themselves have to do with enormous heavenly bodies in motion and gravitational fields and the alignment angles at which smaller orbiting bodies may (theoretically) remain in stationary orbits. Why am I telling you this? So you can better understand some of Mooncake’s obscure track titles, which reference each of Lagrange’s points (“L1” through “L5”).

The good news is that you don't have to have a PhD in astrophysics to enjoy Mooncake's music. If anything, I was actually hoping that this album would be a little less derivative of the greater post-rock canon. The instrumentation invites comparisons to a number of quintessential post-rock acts, including Explosions in the Sky, Mono, Mogwai, and perhaps even Russian Circles and Red Sparowes. This is especially apparent on tracks like “444,” which, though beautiful, does little to distinguish Mooncake from the litany of American post bands. “Novorossiysk 1968” inspires a sublime sense of wonder, and feels something like tumbling through space, watching the beautiful and volatile formation of new galaxies as light and stardust heave together. “Mandarin” follows suit with stratospheric guitar melodies and rich, emotive string arrangements which build, build, build and fade. “The Horizons” perks things up with a stirring string melody before a more foreboding guitar swell takes precedence. But the uplifting string theme returns as the piece progresses, maintaining a stable thematic device to tie the different movements together. This is the sort of conceptual detail that separates talented musicians from pretenders.

While Lagrange Points doesn't exactly turn instrumental post-rock on its proverbial ear, it will offer a fine addition to your music library and will make for an enthralling aural experience. That being said, I'd like to see Mooncake take some bigger risks on their next release.

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—Major Tom