moon diagrams: lifetime of love

Lifetime Of Love is the debut album by Moon Diagrams, the solo recording project of Deerhunter co-founder and drummer Moses John Archuleta. Recorded in Georgia (Atlanta and Athens) and Manhattan (East Village) over a 10-year period, Lifetime Of Love finds Archuleta processing various stages of love, loss, and regeneration via forlorn pop, minimal techno, and weightless experimentation. Throughout each of the 8 songs, Archuleta follows fits of inspiration or moments of chance. By lifting samples from thrift store-sourced LPs, removed from their sleeves and chosen at random to find loops and textures, Archuleta lets the unknown happen naturally, but still confined to a specific set of boundaries. 'Bodymaker' and 'Nightmoves' feature Archuleta's earliest solo recordings, captured between the release of Deerhunter's 2007 breakout LP Cryptograms and 2008 LP Microcastle. The two songs also show Archuleta's willingness to venture outside of the taut, mesmerizing drone rock of his main band. The chilling, ambient techno of 'Nightmoves' perfectly foils and compliments the broodingly sullen but sincerely beautiful shuffle into the dark. In 2012, Archuleta decided to pick up his recording activity, challenging himself to make a solo album. Locking himself in his practice space and using only the spare instruments laying around, Archuleta would enter fugue states in recordings. This period yielded a disparate mix of sonic sketches, from eerily bucolic choir recordings ('Playground'), dusty art-pop ('Moon Diagrams'), and infectiously jubilant dance pop ('End of Heartache'). For the final period, Archuleta found inspiration after an extended stint in Berlin, estranged from his friends and family. But Archuleta used the relative isolation to take in the city's dark energy, eventually returning home to finish the album with a newfound sense of resolve. Subtly grandiose and quietly epic, the album explores a nascent beginning, a morose middle, and a bittersweet, optimistic end.