Daisy Moon: “This record calls back to elements of my earliest stuff, with a vision for what’s next”

Feeling out new spaces through abstract sound designs, avant-pop, electro and broken techno, Daisy Moon’s latest project prioritises free-flowing creativity and exploration

Daisy Moon has had a busy summer. Alongside a string of high-profile festival gigs, including a standout b2b2b with Shanti Celeste and OK Williams at Love International, the Bristol-based producer and DJ released her second EP, System Creak, on Shanti’s Peach Discs back in June. It’s a full-throttle, ravey release: all clattering synths, bolshy pads and chopped-up vocals made for barging to the front-left of the dancefloor.

Although she’s undoubtedly a natural when it comes to energising sun-drunk festival crowds, going for the jugular is not her preferred mode when it comes to production – despite the club-oriented propulsion of her summer release. “When I was making System Creak, I had to really push myself to make something that sounded clubby and melodic,” she says. “But if I have a space to be creative without the constraints of a [club] record, I find myself naturally making sounds that are experimental.”

This is born out in her latest EP, Shadow of Silhouettes, released on Bristol’s pace-setting Timedance label. “I think this record calls back to elements of my earliest stuff, with a vision for what’s next,” Moon says. Shadow of Silhouettes moves confidently from abstract sound designs to avant-pop, skittish electro to broken techno. She often found herself drawn to nature’s most otherworldly features for inspiration; the spiky The Abyssal Zone riffs on what the bottom of the ocean sounds like, for example, while avoiding the usual sonic tropes suggesting depth. Then there’s Moon’s voice: a central yet subtle thread, stretched into haunting spoken-word snippets, pitch-shifted and chopped to abstraction. “I like to manipulate my voice – rather than making a house tune with a big vocal,” she explains.

Moon attended Dartington College of Arts, where she studied the minimalism of Terry Riley and Steve Reich, non-western traditional music, and the New York downtown scene of the 1970s that featured Laurie Anderson and Trisha Brown. Early female electronic music pioneers like Éliane Radigue and Daphne Oram were also formative. After a few hectic summers on the road, writing this new EP has been a chance to trace these explorative threads. More experimental shows have given Moon the chance to tease out the ways her various roles – performing live, DJing, curating nights, producing – can interpolate. Playing Qu Junktions’ 20th birthday alongside Klein and Coby Sey was a chance to “lean into her weirder side”. Her next record, she hopes, will bridge these worlds even more.

Community has played an important role in her development since the beginning. She credits Timedance founder Omar McCutcheon – a.k.a. Batu – for his support in helping her develop her technical skills and conceptual ideas for this latest record. Moon learned her chops on turntables shared with then-housemates Shanti Celeste and Gramrcy, and at the former’s encouragement, played her first gig at the formidable Housework club night where she’s now resident. Moon later co-founded Saffron’s Mix Nights, marking her growth from mentee to mentor by nurturing hundreds of female, trans and non-binary DJs. “Bristol is a good city to be a new producer – there’s always going to be people bringing you up. It’s important as a solo artist to share ideas, so you aren’t floating in a void,” she continues. 

Recently, her own queer night Off-Kilter has become a hub for forward-thinking club (and beyond) sounds, as well as community building. Past line-ups have included the likes of Fèmmme Fraîche’s Michelle Manetti, Barcelona’s MARICAS co-founder ISAbella and ML Buch. For Moon, the most important element of a club is this curation; quality over quantity. “I really noticed people stacking line-ups,” she observes. “It’s a good way to get people through the door. But it’s a different kind of skill, to evolve a set across a night and bring the crowd with you.”

Be it party-starting, community building or sonic experimentation, Moon is propelled by the bigger picture. So what’s next on the agenda? Next time she sits to write, there’s an album in mind; she’s also excited to continue experimenting, with guitars, with voice, with live shows – and to do so away from the tyranny of release schedules, “or making things fit in dance music structures”. To put it in her own words: “I’m going to stay curious.”  

Sounds like: Synapses firing, front-left
Soundtrack to: Bridging worlds
File next to: Roza Terenzi, Peach
Our favourite song: Meadow Rap
Where to find them: @daisymoon