No longer simply the second-best flavour of ice cream (Love Live Peanut Butter Fudge Crunch!), Moon Mist is the new solo project from Jayson LeMoine. Best known as a member of the ECMA award-winning band Spirit of the Wildfire, Moon Mist is a hard left turn away from punk rock and into an eclectic world of Synthwave.
His debut single, “The Needle” features Halifax’s Katie Wayne on vocals, and a tale of lovers—no longer romantic intertwined, but bound together by addiction.
“If I had my way, Spirit would totally be a reggae funk band,” laughs LeMoine.
LeMoine has been using Ableton and Logic with software-based synths with midi controllers since high school to craft reggae-influenced beats, “more or less screwing around.”
Sonically, it might seem like a departure of genre for LeMoine, but the journey from reggae to punk was a shorter trip than you’d expect—both historically, and in the case of Spirit of the Wildfire.
“I would get random people to sing and rap on stuff and record in my bedroom and that’s actually kind of how Spirit of the Wildfire started,” says LeMoine. “Way before we were a punk rock band we were some (terrible) weird bluesy hip-hop thing and I would record most of the music.”
“Spirit evolved into what we were because we got off sitting on the computer recording and actually jammed out on instruments and got really angry. So, we moved towards punk but I’ve always kept up making weird stuff.
“Moon Mist totally started from all the ideas I would have that just in no way could work for SotW. I’d show the boys and they’d be like, ‘Yeah, dude. I dunno. That’s a little weird’.”
However, two years ago, after getting his first honest-to-goodness physical keyboard to add into Spirit of the Wildfire, LeMoine found himself hopelessly addicted to the instrument.
What solo noodling LeMoine managed was posted to his Instagram. One day, after seeing a clip that had been posted to LeMoine’s socials, Katie Wayne dropped into his DMs, asking to perform vocals on one of his tracks.
And thus begat the genesis of “The Needle.”
“I had no idea what they were going to do vocal-wise, so I was stoked when she sent ‘er back and it was super out there,” says LeMoine.
With Wayne taking on the duties of lyricist herself, the results came as a surprise to LeMoine, though it’s a process he has since embraced. Despite its shift in both sound and message, LeMoine says felt it established a good starting point for what people might expect from Moon Mist.
“That’s pretty much what this project is going to be about, just having fun and experimenting,” says LeMoine. “I really like the idea of taking all these people from different bands and genres and making them make super strange electronic music with me.”
While “The Needle” is the debut single to be released from an impending Moon Mist album, LeMoine says that recording is an ongoing process that continues to unfold as it will. It’s a story still being written and what it will sound like when it’s done is anybody’s guess.