Q&A: Gilligan Moss Creates Immersive, Kaleidoscopic Soundscapes in New Album ‘Speaking Across Time’
WARM, ATMOSPHERIC, AND IRRESISTIBLY DANCEABLE — Brooklyn-based duo Gilligan Moss has released the perfect album to wrap up summer. Traversing everything from ’90s rave music, funk, old soul, and country sounds, Speaking Across Time is a testament to GilMo’s profound ability to capture moments through music.
Released on the heels of their self titled debut album in 2021, Speaking Across Time is a kaleidoscopic view into GilMo’s creative growth. The duo successfully paint rich soundscapes through strokes of unique sampling, classical production skills, and a rich attention to detail. Each moment of the album feels intentional and immerses listeners in the concept of moving through space and time.
Luna had the immense pleasure of catching up with Ben from GilMo to discuss all things the new album, creative crop rotation and sliding glass door moments. Read below for the full interview, and be sure to catch Gilligan Moss on one of their current tour dates.
LUNA: Congrats on the new album. How are you feeling?
GILLIGAN MOSS: Thank you so much. It is pretty surreal. It's just a wild, cathartic thing to have. I feel like the album is something I've been dealing with and working on for a couple years, and now everybody else can deal with it you know, and kind of have their own interpretation. It's really the greatest. It's very relieving and exciting.
LUNA: What do you feel is the best part about sharing your art with the world? What’s the hardest part?
GILLIGAN MOSS: I think the best part is just to see and hear other people interact with something that you make — it’s extremely powerful. I'm very proud of the finished products, but I also know that people are gonna ingest them as kind of a conversation between them and the music, and it might be a totally different conversation than I had with the music. So I think that's very exciting and interesting. And that's probably the best part.
I don't know if there is a worst part. I think with any record, I'm a little shy that some parts might not have fully been communicated the way that I want them to. I feel like, with music or art or anything, you're trying to capture a feeling or a thought, and I’m not sure that I caught it all the way. It's not that bad though, if that’s the worst thing.
LUNA: Have you listened to any music today?
GILLIGAN MOSS: Yes, I have. I listened to the new Caribou single, which I like; I listened to a beat that my music partner sent me, which I really liked.
LUNA: Do you have a best album of 2024 or an album of the summer that you've been enjoying?
GILLIGAN MOSS: That's a great question. There's a guy called Sam Evian who I think is spectacular. He lives upstate and makes really, really amazing psychedelic rock, or kind of like psychedelic indie. I think his new record is fantastic. I met him randomly last year, and we connected. He has an extreme reverence for a kind of classic production that I think is cool. Been listening to that a lot. I would say the Mk.Gee record, but everybody else on the planet has said that. Have you heard of this artist, Charli XCX?
LUNA: (Laughs) I’m familiar with her work. What media do you like to consume to get inspired to make music? Is it purely music, or do you feel like you have other outlets as well?
GILLIGAN MOSS: It definitely depends. I would kind of have two answers to that. One of them is,
I think any song worth anything that I ever started was started by trying to copy somebody else's thing. I'm usually listening to a dance track or an old record that I think is inspiring or has something that I want to try to capture in a new way. And I think probably a more interesting thing that I do is, especially during writing camps and when I'm working with my partner, I love reading cookbooks and cooking.
LUNA: Do you feel like you create more when you're happy, when you're feeling down, when you're in a particular mood, and if so, how do you tap into creativity when you're not in that particular mood?
GILLIGAN MOSS: I think something on this album that I tried to tap into and in general, most of the best … and most successful stuff [that I’ve written] has started from a technical starting place. Not totally devoid of emotion, but not super in touch with what is going on for me emotionally. With this record, I think one of the reasons that I feel a little exposed about it is because some of the songs did get imbued with more of that personal touch. I think in general, it's best for me in the morning, when my mind is really clear and I've got my first caffeine buzz, and when not a lot has consciously entered my brain yet.
LUNA: Do you feel like you have a tried and true way of getting out of a creative slump?
GILLIGAN MOSS: I mean, I don't all the way, but I have a very good friend. His name is Ben Ruttner. He's in a band called The Knocks. He just writes with a lot of people and works on a lot of music projects, and we have a very close friendship and creative partnership. Over the last few years, he’s been a really big advocate of creative crop rotation — that is, not letting songwriting be a be all, end all. I've been trying to develop other hobbies, whether it's athletic or creative outlets like swimming or writing or even something stupid, like trying to figure out how to make video content in a creative way.
LUNA: Kind of pivoting a little bit, but do you have any unpopular opinions, hot takes about the music industry right now, or any musical hot takes in general?
GILLIGAN MOSS: So many hot takes about the music industry. I think it's a huge pile of trash, right? Yeah, it is just an utter dumpster fire. Yeah, I guess my hot take is that good music will outlast crappy trends. I hope that I'm right about that.
LUNA: Do you feel like genre serves an important role in today's musical landscape?
GILLIGAN MOSS: You know, I don't think that. I used to think so. I used to be one of those nerds that was on Torrent websites, finding obscure music. I had friends that knew of the cool thing, always. I think it's tremendously helpful for people to be able to find the stuff that they like. And it is cool in a way that genre is a nice tent pole that people can gravitate towards, and then spread out from as far away as they need to. So I think it's helpful for music discovery.
LUNA: Do you have any sliding glass door moments? For example, if something had gone a little differently in your life, you wouldn't be where you are today, making music, and having put out this record?
GILLIGAN MOSS: I mean, I didn't really think that I was ever gonna make music as a living. My partner, Evan, started the project. I was writing about music at the time, and I sort of wanted to be a music journalist or manager or something. Just by reaching out to him, I got involved with it, and
now I make music, so that was a pretty big glass-door moment for me. I think … also as a project, we made so many wrong, bad decisions, [and we] were on a classically bad major record label to begin with. I think we failed in a bad way, because we failed slowly. I think we could have done things a lot differently if we had just moved faster and failed faster
I think, at the start of the thing, we made a record that just blew up into ash, and that was a big moment for us to say, “Alright, well, we want to do this for ourselves, and we want to find music that makes us happy and we don't really like that is sort of the thing of making music. So, you know, let's hit a hard reset, and I guess, move through the glass door of joy and connection.”
LUNA: I love that. Awesome. Did you feel like you ever had anyone tell you the classic line “You're not going to make it, kid”?
GILLIGAN MOSS: Yeah, a couple people. I had a music friend from Chicago who I grew up with who said, “Yeah, I feel like you guys could maybe work on film scores or something.” I mean, obviously I would love to do that. But he was kind of saying, “You don't make great dance music.” We also had an A&R guy at our first record label who was extremely un-nurturing and pretty unkind towards us and the project. So I think that damaged us pretty early, but we worked through it.
LUNA: I just have a couple more. Do you have a proudest moment as an artist or on the new album?
GILLIGAN MOSS: I'm really riding a very cool high, but we really missed the opportunity to headline during COVID. I've played, we've played huge shows. We've played with Odezsa, played for literally 10 or 12,000 people … opening. We've played Coachella and done really a lot of cool things; but literally having 200 people show up to buy tickets to our concert and request songs and know, the words to stuff is… the two headline shows that we've done so far, I'm just utterly shocked and completely overjoyed that we have real fans that listen to us. It's such a crazy, cool honor, and cool feeling. I think that is totally the highlight of my career so far.
LUNA: Amazing. Is there anything else you want to share about the album, about touring, or just anything you want the people of Luna to know?
GILLIGAN MOSS: As far as the live stuff goes, I think that we put on a pretty unique live experience that is hopefully differentiated from a lot of other DJ sets. We do some meditation during our set. We try to make it real, you know, trying to embody the Gilligan moss universe as much as possible. So I recommend anybody that is up for an interesting experience should come to the show.
Oh, also, I would love for your people to know about the visual artist that we worked with named Orly Anan, who is just like a spectacularly cool multidisciplinary artist working in Mexico City. She was so fabulous to work with, and I think we made something extremely cool together, and it really imbued the music with a whole other dimension of meaning. So I'm eternally grateful to her.
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