Moon Gogo

Mystery can be a valuable commodity for artists, but in our digital age of information saturation and rampant social media, it’s also one that’s sadly in short supply. Not so for French-Korean fusion duo Moon Gogo, who have deliberately avoided endless self-promotion and exposure. Until recently, very few clips of them existed online, nor was there much in the way of background, but word of mouth travels fast, and they’ve since been featured on KEXP and are now very much on people’s radar. About time too, for French musician Frederico Pellegrini and South Korean E’Joung-Ju have crafted something that’s truly unique.

While he switches between guitars, vocals, and electronics, she plays the geomungo, a traditional Korean six-stringed instrument that’s played half like a slide and half like a drum. The result is utterly captivating; cyclical melodies that capture the essence of a dark, raw blues and folk, and the strange allure of acoustic trip hop beats. Their songs have the dusty, scorched-earth desert vibe of the early bluesmen, but with an otherworldly quality, like it’s being beamed back from some apocalyptic, dystopian future. In short, it’s like nothing you’ve ever heard before, and yet something you’ll want to repeat again and again.

They don’t have many shows planned, but if you get the chance, go see the self-styled French Cowboy and Nanto-Korean. Music like this rarely achieves the sort of commercial success that allows it last, but then maybe beauty was just meant to be fleeting. Either way, this is very special and deserves to be heard.