Multi front-men, Multi-coloured A couple of rooms above a little pub in Borough are the MMO HQ. Something of an east-end Big Pink, The Gladstone is where the Moon Music Orchestra has gone from loose-knit collective to folk-rock force. Feet firmly on the ground, the band run the pub and practice above it. The walls upstairs are lined with banjos, guitars and mandolins while a well-worn tape-machine resides on the coffee-table, ready to roll. Strictly operating as a 6 or 7-piece, the extended Moon Music family is many and varied- including sometime collaborators Findlay Brown and Simon Lord (Simian, Black Ghosts) alongside a gaggle of non-musical creatives. Always inclusive, the resounding Moon Music attitude resides somewhere between the summer of love and a good old-fashioned knees-up.
Eager to spread the word, last summer saw the band pack up the MMO minibus with friends and instruments and take their show on the road. They defied the rain and mud with a blisteringly upbeat set at the Green Man Festival, took centre stage at the (surprisingly raucous) aftershow party at Moseley Folk Festival and generally blew the cobwebs from folk festivals across the land. This winter has seen a load more London gigs, support slots around the land with Fin and (at last) the band knuckling down to commit their sound to tape. We await the results.
