The Soft Moon with Skull Katalog and Galactique
8 p.m. Tuesday
Opolis | Norman
You lay down at night to rest, to recharge from a long day to make another one possible. As essential as oxygen, food and water, sleep is a requirement to living, and to go without is a nightmare. Luis Vasquez — producer, songwriter and instrumentalist behind darkwave project The Soft Moon — knows this. His most precious moments of respite were poisoned and drained away, leaving him writhing, sweating and all-consumed by brutal, possessive visions of a world set on fire. Apocalypse, and what was left of the planet after, flashed and throbbed through his head almost every night, the night terrors unrelenting in their frequency and devastating in their impact.
Not that Vasquez is a monster for having lived through it. He’s well-adjusted enough, eager to smile and laugh in spite of it all. It could be the music that’s saved him from a cloudier fate. But the madness seeped into his neural wiring, bleeding out his pores and pooled into every recording he’s put out so far and dulling the pain if not entirely removing it.
“There was a point in my life where I was soundtracking those nightmares. It’s almost autobiographical, but also a film score,” Vasquez said of his thudding, industrial-studded take on noise pop. “I haven’t had one in over a year, which is insane because I’ve had them since I was a kid, constantly. I don’t know if that’s my subconscious letting me know I’m going in the right direction or not.”
Any healing that may have taken place forced Vasquez to dive deeper than ever, which could explain the title of his third album, Deeper, out earlier this year. Wanderlust and a drive for self-discovery took him from his native sunny California to Europe two years ago, not long after the release of his sophomore LP, Zeros. First living in Italy and then Berlin, he, on a certain level, felt more at home there than he ever had before, hunkered in the epicenter of the Krautrock and synth-punk movements that rang loudest three decades back. Then again, this was a new place away from family and friends, a self-imposed solitary confinement that felt necessary if draining. It was a shaky situation for someone prone to desolation. He was resolved to write new material, but it was exhausting by every measure.
“I was in a dark place. I really want to achieve happiness and want to get that peace of mind, because things often feel so chaotic inside,” Vasquez said. “My mind is always racing, and my music comes out dark and I want to understand why. The main goal was trying to figure out why that is and trying to achieve some sort of peace.”
Be it coincidence or some karmic intervention, in the lowest moment, the universe offered a hand. Eventually, Vasquez’s manager phoned in to reveal that Depeche Mode has asked The Soft Moon to join them for a string of European dates.
“I have problems with staying motivated. I fight with giving up,” Vazquez said. “So getting that opportunity revamped my motivation to be a musician and songwriter … and it was this kind of confirmation that things are going in the right direction. It felt right, and it gave me some power and some confidence to continue.”
Photo: Dennis Shoenberg
Invigorated, Vasquez pinned back his ears and attacked the writing behind Deeper harder than ever. Something about being away from the world he knew and performing for bigger crowds than he ever had before led him into a new creative headspace. The hurt that possessed the early stages of writing manifested in the same piercing, violent sonic palate fans expected, but something else to took it to a more crowd-friendly plane.
“Because I was alone, I think I want to make poppier songs than I usually do. It was almost like trying to make friends, to find someone to talk to and relate to,” Vasquez said. “It translated into a record that was a little more accessible … it’s weird, the way it works.”
Out this past March through Captured Tracks, Deeper feels like a next step. The buzz is building, and the luxury of catching The Soft Moon in a spot as intimate as Opolis may soon be over. The album not only amassed heaps of praise, but earned him new listeners faster than Zeros or his self-titled debut ever did. And there is a sense of peace, both professionally and personally, that warms his day-to-day life. Vasquez is unencumbered and excited by the prospect of spending most of 2015 out on the road, both stateside and his adoptive home across the pond, and he plans to fill any gaps with side projects and visual treatments for more choice cuts from Deeper. Suddenly, a nightmarish existence is on the eve of become something of a dream.
Maybe Vasquez is finally staring down his own soft moon, those pervasive night terrors mowed back to reveal a cool, starry glow. And the sharp, grinding whirr is tempered to only the occasional chirp in the night. Maybe he’ll finally get his rest in the comfort of his Berlin apartment. Or maybe he’ll embrace the control afforded to him, willing to ride the chaos into the evilest corners of those visions still buried somewhere in his skull.
“I don’t want to predetermine the future,” he said, offering no hint as to whether he expects his future work to be lighter or heavier. “Deeper, in the very beginning, was going to be a totally different kind of album. When I started writing, though, it came out not resembling that at all. I just let go. It told me I can’t control it and need to just let it be what it wants to be.”
