Fusing ambient electronica and heart-melting vocal hooks, Luna Pines’ atmospheric tracks are addictive, captivating and original. Following the successful release of single ‘Uneven’, synth-player and band co-founder Lotte van den Berg talks about the band’s future.
Your sound is very unique and is continually developing. What inspires your sound?
There’s loads of stuff that influences our sound, I’d say our main musical influences stem from bands like The Japanese House, Bon Iver , Tycho and The 1975. I’m a huge fan of producers like Mike Sapone and Mike Crossey, who heavily inspire our production. Films are also a big inspiration for us; a reviewer of one of our tracks said our music was like ‘soundtracks to movies that don’t exist’, which I though was super cool. I love movie soundtracks and I often think about music very visually when we’re creating it, there are certain scenes and colours that come into my head with some songs.
What's your song writing process usually like?
It used to be solely me a couple of years ago, but since me Ryan and Rob became a solid lineup it’s much more collaborative. I’ll come up with a very basic idea, get Ryan round and he will layer some guitar and melody ideas. Ryan is such an incredible songwriter and comes up with things I just wouldn’t — together our ideas essentially make our sound. Me and Ryan have written a lot of our tunes in a couple of hours, I find it so easy and comfortable to write with him. Rob and me are both drummers, which is cool because we always get two perspectives on the beats. I find our music is very drum focussed a lot of the time and we always try to come up with really original beats. Rob is the best drummer I know and a complete beast behind the kit on our live shows; he has a certain style that just brings our tunes to life live.
Your production is unreal. How did you learn and when did you discover that it was something you want to pursue?
Thank you so much! I really only started properly getting into it in the second year of Uni 4 years ago, which is when I started Luna Pines. I became really obsessed with the clean and polished production of 80s music and really wanted to refine my production to make stuff sound like that. With me I wouldn’t say I’m necessarily naturally talented at stuff, but I work really hard. If I don’t know how to do something production wise I will work until I the vision in my head for that sound or song becomes a reality. It can become annoying sometimes as I will obsess over it until it’s right and actually lose sleep over it quite often haha.
Is there anyone you would dream of playing with one day?
Oooo that’s a good question. I would love to play with all of the influences I mentioned above of course, and also people like Marika Hackman and bands like Explosions In The Sky - they’re an instrumental post rock band who also did soundtracks for movies like Lone Survivor and Friday Night Lights (my favourite movie.) If we could support them one day, that’d be so surreal.
What's next for Luna Pines?
We have a load of shows coming up around the UK, and new material ready to go. A month ago we released our last single ‘Uneven’ which did really well for us, so we’d like to release another tune soon for sure. We have an exclusive tune for the Nice People compilation called ‘good luck and do your best’ too. We also have some very exciting tour news coming soon, but I can’t say anything about that just yet!