Interview: Cleopatrick on their 'most personal' album Fake Moon: 'This feels like a pretty big step forward for the band'
Cleopatrick talk new album 'Fake Moon' and the sky being the limit when it comes to the future...
Canadian rock duo Cleopatrick's second studio album, 'Fake Moon', has just landed.
Luke Gruntz and Ian Fraser have crafted a sonic masterpiece that is intended to "sound like it was recorded, produced, and mixed on a Nintendo Gamecube."
With bit-crushed guitars, glitched vocals, and low-res samples, the highly experimental pair have achieved a unique listening experience that sees the guitar "destroyed" digitally and sounds like it's from another planet.
It's a complete contrast to their acclaimed 2021 debut LP 'Bummer', and moving forward, they want to approach any new music with an "open mind".
Here, Luke and Ian tell Contact Music how the album unintentionally became their "most personal" collection to date, being inspired by Radiohead and Mk.gee, and why the album and their live show offer completely different experiences...
Explain the unique concept for the album?
Luke: Well, throughout the record, one of the first songs that I had written that ended up kind of being the impetus for the album was the first song, ‘Heat Death’. And on that one, I had been experimenting with reducing the quality of my guitar recording, my acoustic guitar, so it has this video game-y, eight-bit resonance to it. And I just thought that that was such a fun dichotomy, an acoustic guitar but clearly being destroyed digitally. That's a really fun contrast between analog and digital. Yeah, that song, that kind of ethos for production ended up inspiring a lot of the production choices across the album. And in the end, when I listen to this record, front to back, it feels and sounds like it's both this really natural around-the-campfire kind of thing, while also being extremely digital and almost robotic in some ways. It feels like high tech versus low tech, and that, I feel, pairs so well with, like, the visual of the video game aesthetic, like what we did on the ‘Bad Guy’ music video.
Your vocals shine on the track Chew. Tell us about that song?
Luke: That's a really unique song. It's super asymmetrical and just wonderful. What can I say about ‘Chew’? It's one of the more unique songs on the record, I'd say, one of the most unique Cleopatrick songs. It came out when I had consumed cannabis, a little bit more than I should have, and I was kind of freaking out. But I had my guitar with me, and I just kind of was strolling these chords, and it tied me down to the planet, so I didn't float away. And then the song just came up, and it was like, 'OK, that's a song.'
How was that production-wise and also when you come to play it live? Because there's a lot going on there...
Luke: Yeah, producing this record was so fun. I did a lot of production on my end in demoing phases for a handful of these songs, and a handful of the songs kind of remained the way they were in the demo, which is really cool. And then there's other songs that were produced much more when we worked with our producer, Phil Weinrobe (Leonard Cohen and Damien Rice), doing the main tracking for the album. And those ones turned out in a very different way. And so this record has this really interesting kind of stitched together feeling of time frames and recording quality and hands and fingerprints. It's very cool and unique. We've never made anything so varied and nuanced.
Would you say this new direction comes from a place of confidence now?
Ian: I would say so for sure. Yeah, there's many different realities where we could have done a similar thing that we had done before, but through the process of writing and growing, I feel like it became apparent at a specific point that this was the sound that was coming out. And I think what really made the album is the trust and confidence in that and in believing that that's aligned with what we've always kind of done when it comes to creating music. It's like doing what's feels exciting and right to us in the moment.
You cite Arctic Monkeys and as an influence, and they've never been afraid to try new things. Do you think you'll switch things up with every album?
Ian: Yeah, I guess we'll see. It's hard to really say. I think, perhaps five years ago, it would have been hard to imagine a point where we're making music that sounds like ‘Fake Moon’ sounds. I think just continuing with an open mind to what feels right. I wouldn't want to count anything out. It's just the idea that we could go anywhere is quite freeing and exciting.
Tell us about the album's sci-fi nature to it?
It has a little bit of that ‘2001: Space Odyssey’ [Stanley Kubrick film] thing going on. And I like to think of the songs as being like, shot through a camera. The record’s supposed to be about truth and fundamental reality and how is it verified, and how does it vary from perspective to perspective. And so the songs kind of jump between observers and jump between points of view. And I like to imagine them through the camera lens, where some songs are very tight shots on an individual, and you're understanding the world through their eyes as they observe it. And then other songs are holistic views of the whole planet orbiting in quiet space. And in those songs, it sort of puts what's come before into perspective as just recognising that one person's observations don't create what is objective reality.
Would you say it's your kind of most vulnerable work?
Luke: I feel like I put a lot of myself into the lyrics, and I had made the conscious choice to try and zoom out more in the words, just as a songwriting practice. I liked the idea of speaking almost more ambiguously and leaving more space for the listener to project themselves, but ironically, and sort of paradoxically in doing that, the further out I zoomed, it actually feels like the more specific certain things got to my own life, or certain feelings got to the root of it, which was a really wonderful discovery. And I think in the end now, it feels like a record that anybody can listen to and build their own understanding of, while also being the most personal thing I've ever done, which is so cool and not scary at all.
Which artists were you listening to as inspiration?
Luke: Ian and I both expanded our listening habits so much over the last few years, just getting older and spending more time on discovery, just having really a lot more downtime to explore. Radiohead had been a huge one for a long time. For me, this band called Slow Pulp, their self-produced records are just incredible. You and I also got extremely into Mk.gee and Dijon and the work they've done together.
You are playing the UK this March. How many new songs can fans expect to hear?
Luke: We’re going to play a lot of them because they feel so good. We really want to show people, maybe on the record this feels like a pretty big step forward for the band, and it is a big step forward in a lot of ways. But live, these songs really fit into the set. And we're so excited to take people on that journey. We're the same guys, this is us. Yeah, we're really excited to mix it up, a lot of the old music combined with the new music. It's going to be this roller coaster of feelings and thoughts and emotion.
Ian: For the longest time, music was written almost primarily with the live show in mind. I remember we'd often gotten comments saying, ‘Oh, you sound just like the record,’ which is a great compliment. And it's true, but with these new tracks, it's like the record is one thing, and then the live show is going to be totally its own thing as well. The songs are going to have a whole new life, which is super exciting, super cool.
What's next for you?
Luke: We’re mainly just looking forward to these shows happening for the UK and Ireland in March. Past that, there's potential to do some more touring in different places, which would be quite cool. Really, I feel most excited about the idea of making more music, more recordings. It feels sort of like an open book at the moment.
Stream 'Fake Moon' now on all streaming platforms.
Catch Cleopatrick live:
18-Mar-2025 Brighton, UK Chalk
19-Mar-2025 Bristol, UK SWX
21-Mar-2025 Nottingham, UK Rockcity
22-Mar-2025 Manchester, UK Academy 2
23-Mar-2025 Dublin, IE Academy
25-Mar-2025 Glasgow, UK SWG3
26-Mar-2025 Leeds, UK Stylus
28-Mar-2025 Birmingham, UK O2 Institute 2
29-Mar-2025 London, UK Electric Brixton
