Luna Set - Monkey‘s Midnight Mood from 1982 [+ their 2 other albums]

Long ago I posted their Luna Set Art album and mentioned how much I dearly loved its delicate and precious style... and this one is their next best, with some very tasty progressive numbers.  A very poor mono rip has been circulating for years, and I always felt it deserved better.

This trio consists of vocals by Juliane Klems, producer and keyboardist Mario Strack, and flute and sax player and contributor to some compositions, Kai Taschner (described as an actor, voice actor, and musician).  Note that Mario went on to write a few more CDs in the later era.  Please read his wonderful bio on discogs, indicating how self-sacrificial a life in the arts is, even today, or especially today:

Born 4. 23. 1956 in Graz (Austria) 
Autodidact since he left school in the early 70's, he became a member in several rockbands and toured with them playing the keyboards. 
During the 80s he did lots of work as a composer and music producer for small indie-labels and major companies with his own Band "Luna Set" as well as with various other artists. 
With the beginning of the 90's he decided to go back to perfect independence. 
Together with his wife, the painter Jacqueline Ditt, he founded "universal arts" as an art market concept. This means, they are running their own gallery and a production-studio. 
Expanding to visual arts, Mario Strack started creating audiovisual clips with the electronic media. His style is known as "Illustrated Music" - a combination of "lyrical electro rock" - songs and moving pictures - that expands the artwork to a multisensual experience. 
Today he lives and works as a free artist in Munich. 


As a bonus I'll repost their other two records so those who are curious can hear all their oeuvre. Perhaps you will agree with me that the third album Art is their best work.

Here's the most progressive song, Taschner's T.G.I., which I've always loved to listen to over and over again even back when I only had a mono copy!!





From Strack, I think his best composition is "The German Khan" (an in-joke?).  I know the two-minute long synth intro is hard to slog through, but your patience will be rewarded eventually.  It's a shame the remainder of the LP couldn't have been conducted with such ambition, but I understand there might have been a leaning towards commercial success here.  (Cf. the first song's lyrics, "you will hear my voice on the radio, you will see my face in the video..." tragic, I guess.)





Here's the old prognotfrog on Art from two years back:

Last album from this new wave/minimal synth band not yet available, this is from 1983.  I didn't much like the first record (posted long ago on possibly mutant sounds (?)) -- to me it was a bit too simplistic in that minimal synth style, but this is all-out in progressiveness with the songwriting: there are odd touches everywhere, sudden modulations for example in most songs.  I really love the gentle, feminine aspects of the compositions and the absence of jumpiness that to me is such a defect of the genre.  It's very enjoyable and can be listened to over and over again in my opinion without any boredom.  As well, I thought the next record, "Monkey's Midnight Mood'  became a bit too poppy again albeit with the exception of one or two progressive tracks.

Credits for this band can be seen here:
http://www.discogs.com/Luna-Set-Art/release/1388133



On a completely unrelated note, today is the birthday of my youngest son who turns six, though he is still our beautiful little baby.
Happy Birthday to him:

look there goes another angel,
self-ascribed humanness in twice iris-halos
in an aftereffect projection of maroon vision,
no motion picture, a crawlaway face
like a morning hero, smiling in curvatures of space
broadly mixing a flour of miracles with soda minutes
in the stained glass way, pilgrim Samaritan vademecum
he’s on hand for a foot out, a placable doorway
and noah whip, in assumed traffic directions
positioned for our proportions
a small will of tider bearings, a good lack 
on gold curled, luck in passing
book of hours off a plane tree
little manger cliffhanger, 
he’s my rainbow in black and white night
for no one else to seem, my bornagain angel
my own personal protagonist 
in every new plot to come