Bjørn Felle
Paradise Moon

synthpop / electronica / synthwave

Hot on the heels of his well-received album Extreme Hazard Planet and a mini-tour of the North of England with labelmates Flange Circus and guests, Bjørn Felle has unveiled the official release of his new Paradise Moon EP.

Bjørn Felle’s creative output is eclectic, engaging and energetic; an idiosyncratic electronic sound inspired by 80s synthpop and punk, 90s techno, house and indie grunge, the odd 16-bit video game soundtrack, and a healthy dose of psychedelia. May’s Extreme Hazard Planet is a blend of the tongue-in-cheek party vibes of Holy Fuck and the character-piece songwriting of Blur, amped and industrialised and then degraded with the lo-fi VHS vibes of TVAM.

Another example of his eclectic and exciting take on indie, electronica, and shoegaze, Paradise Moon’s five songs are distinct thematically and sonically from the album, even though both were inspired by the same creative sources. The album and EP were conceived together in terms of writing and recording, and Bjørn always intended them to be seen as separate, though related, releases. Bjørn views Paradise Moon as a natural and somehow inevitable companion piece for Extreme Hazard Planet:

“Paradise Moon has a softer synthwave vibe compared to Extreme Hazard Planet. In contrast to the album’s themes of anger and incredulity, Paradise Moon aims to communicate feelings of sadness, disappointment and fear, and a desire to escape from humanity. The album is more industrial, influenced by 80s electro industrial goth bands like Skinny Puppy and Killing Joke, as well as some esoteric stuff like Admonition and Theory of Mind, which are kinda like Röyksopp on a bad trip. I wanted to flip this on the EP, inverting the concept in every way I could. They’re separate records, but like the Earth and the moon they are part of the same thing, one made from the other and trapped in an orbit it can’t escape from.”

Bjørn is big fan of computer games, and the evocative and highly descriptive name of each release may seem familiar to gamers:

“They both come from No Man’s Sky, with a ‘paradise moon’ being a type of moon, and ‘extreme hazard planet’ being a warning you hear when you land somewhere with like firestorms or volcanoes or high levels of radiation. It got me thinking about what a paradise moon would be more literally, which got me to this concept of a resort on the moon to escape the conditions planet-side.”

This conceptual starting point, combined with a change in production process, led to a set of song ideas and arrangement experiments:

“I switched to different production process early in the recording of Extreme Hazard Planet. Learning the new software resulted in a load of interesting sonic experiments with no songs associated. Having tracks already forming without concepts attached to them meant I could try different songs and see what worked with each track. Some of these tracks have existed as several songs, and a couple have gone back and forth between the album and the EP before finding their place.”