Introducing: Lunar Isles – Right Way Round & 3 questions

“Written and recorded over the space of a year in Lunar Isles’ bedroom studio in Cheongju, South Korea, Right Way Round is the third album release in as many years from the Scottish dream pop artist. The twelve tracks are drenched in introspection and nostalgic sounds, pondering the complexities of perspective as memories of home and adventure blend into one.“

I have shared Lunar Isles’ tracks before on my blog and I am super excited to share this album. I have listened to it from the beginning to the end and I am really loving this dream pop. When you play the first track, it reminds me of Swiss Portrait, another great dream pop indie artist from Scotland. I am not sure what it is with Scottish artists but their music has such a unique feel. It always makes me so happy to see more and more talented artists coming from that part of the world. I was living in Aberdeen, Scotland for a while and somehow Scotland will always be a special place for me. My sister was an exchange student in South Korea last year, so this album feels even more personal to me. It is harder for me to express, but sometimes I feel like the more stories I can connect to music, the more I like it.

The album is full of dreamy tracks varying in slower, more upbeat, and even experimental melodies. The whole album feels like a complete story where you have to read from the first page to the last. At least that was what I was doing.

I am so happy the artist decided to release this album on cassettes. This is exactly that release I would love to have on my label and release on cassettes, but the situation is different and I will need a long break before I can return to running a label, if ever.

The album has no weak points, it is also hard to pick your favorite songs. Sometimes there are albums that have songs you would like to skip rather than listen to, but in this one, I had no urge to skip any single song. As I wrote above, the album is like a story and you have to listen to it from the beginning to the end. No skipping, no shuffling.

It has been a while since I have listened to such a great dream/indie/lo-fi pop album and I am so happy you can hear it now too.

I talked to David aka Lunar Isles and asked him our 3 questions:

What inspired you to start making music and what keeps you making music?

I recorded music as a teenager but fell out of the habit for a while until COVID blessed us with hours of extra time at home. For me, making music is an outlet for reflecting on or expressing the things I’m feeling or seeing around me, almost like a journal. Inspiration comes from other music, books, movies, and life itself, but I try to make time at least once a week just to experiment and see what comes out. Some of those experiments eventually turn into songs!

What was the most challenging thing in your music (artistic) path?

I think one of the biggest challenges as a DIY artist or bedroom producer is trying to capture a sound that sounds professional enough that you are comfortable sharing it with the world while also leaving enough of the ‘faults’ or human elements in your recordings that bring it to life. You can spend hours doing countless takes or mixing tracks in a perfectionist way but sometimes you lose what makes the music fun to listen to in the process. It’s a difficult balancing act that I’m still constantly trying to master.

What would you dream to do if anything was possible?

A current dream of mine is to bring music to a live setting somehow. In an ideal world, some band members who were willing and able to play my songs would appear so that I could make this happen and go on tour one day!

You can buy the album or pre-order the cassette or check out more.