daymoon

 

Portuguese regressive rockers Daymoon aim to delight the world with an incoherent concoction of music from the across the past millennium. Or so.
 

come again? regressive rockers?

Well alright, some may call it progressive, but regressive sounds a good deal cooler... and I guess it's not even Rock either. Others even call us Retro, but in a time when that means 14-year olds reviving their tamagotchi, we prefer to pull together music from the past 1000 years or so, and from any corner of the world. Except of course that we don't do it too well, and the vocals are crappy too, otherwise we'd be doing progressive rock. Or so.

 

 

 

Band Members

Local & international. Feel free to click wildly on the pictures below to read our egomaniac biographies

 

 

 

Fred

guitars, flute, recorders, keyboard, vocals,

ethnic percussion

André

acoustic & electronic drums,

incidental vocals

 

Adriano

clarinet, flute, melodica, keyboard, sax, percussion, vocals

 

Paulo

keyboards, vocals

 

 

 

 

Nno Mar

bass guitar

Joana

keyboard, percussion, vocals

 

Rodrigo

electric guitar

 

 

Mark

(international Daymoon) bass guitar

 

 

Davis

(international Daymoon) drums

 

 

 

   

Band Info

Whose

First of all a (commissioned! duh!) quote:
 

"Daymoon is something very special on the progressive rock scene. This band knows the meaning of the words irony, they have a sense of humour and their leader Fred Lessing certainly knows how to write good and strong lyrics. They also share several characteristics with other high quality prog bands: the Daymoon musicians can play well, the compositions are intricate, well-structured, make use of the odd time signature, feature loads of acoustic and electric instruments and – as suspected – some unusual harmonic changes. Originally, the band started out as Fred on his own with a little help from friends from near and far, but eventually a true band developed featuring some of Portugal’s finest young – and perhaps not-quite-so-young-anymore – players that enable Fred Lessing’s truly personal music to live and breathe, very much like an unexpected but very welcome hot date."

(thus describes us Swedish musicologist Thomas Olsson)
 

And now to my own, somewhat less quotable explanation:


"Daymoon started out in the early 80s as a Portuguese band called Dead Landscape, later (and more aptly) Por Ter Lido Mal O Mapa (For Having Misread The Map). Most of the band's music, written by Fred Lessing, was what is now loosely called 'progressive rock' - we called it symphonic rock. The 80s however had no room for that kind of music, and the band disbanded after a few fruitless years of battling against the mainstream. All band members except one moved into more commercial realms, such as Luso-American band Ithaka, and even as a support band for Portuguese muzak king Marco Paulo. Fred however, unwilling to sell his soul, kept on making fruitlessly regressive rock and worked hard selling his soul in a non-daymoon day job, until he eventually managed to assemble a reasonably functional home studio. Here he recorded 3 solo albums under the somewhat silly name 'Daymoon', this obviously being a witless semi-Grecian innuendo. Some of these albums included local musicians and, thanks to the Internet, musicians from all over the world. Unfortunately, none of these albums ever reached a finished stage, mostly because Fred wasn't taking his music too seriously.

 

2009 finally and unwittingly witnessed a proper Daymoon band emerging from the urban and suburban depths of Lisbon, featuring a bunch of gifted musicians. This all because they had helped recording the forthcoming Daymoon album All Tomorrows, released in 2011 and available as a digital download, post-produced and mastered by Andy Tillison (The Tangent, PO90). The debut album will be followed still in 2011 by yet another ridiculously ambitious Daymoon album, called Fabric of Space Divine, which has been in the making since 2002. Also in the making is a third studio album featuring the full, current band line-up, and compositions from bandmebers other than Fred.

 

As to the music, Fred hastes to add that he is not a particularly expedient performer, but certainly a very poor singer, and therefore has no choice but to focus on composing and arranging the music that he writes. Furthermore he hastily hastens to say that his music is usually inconsistent to the utmost degree, this being a particular pleasure he derives from the filthy act of writing music. Fred's unfortunate band fellows are currently desperately waiting for their turn to bring in some proper and coherent music written by themselves."