LUNA LOW (VINYL)

Art of Fighting return with their first album in twelve years. Entitled Luna Low, the album is to be released on Friday 7th June via Remote Control Records. It is just as expansive, heartfelt and sublime as you could have hoped, but with a newfound wry sense of humour. Art Of Fighting played their last live shows in 2008, although they say "we never really decided to go on hiatus and we never broke up." A period of parenthood, work, international living and other adult pursuits intervened.

It was actually only a few years before the band were back together in the jam room, "just for fun." By 2012 they had begun a fairly measured process of rehearsing, writing and demoing, until they were finally ready to begin recording for a new album. They worked with drummer Marty at the helm (who has recorded Clare Bowditch, Jen Cloher and others), first taking advantage of the natural reverb at Brunswick's Masonic Hall, then at Marty's Standalone Studios in Coburg. The album was mixed by Marty and mastered by US icon Greg Calbi. Of the finished album, Art Of Fighting says: "Luna Low is not an autobiographical work, more a proxy by which we can reflect on some of our own could-have-beens and would-have-beens. It's about dreams past becoming reduced dreams of the present, ageing and lifestyle colliding, growing up after growing up, and perhaps, the first set of AOF songs that approach these themes with a sometimes playful eye."

After twelve years, Luna Low makes it seem as if Art Of Fighting just had a brief nap and awoke refreshed, to make their most compelling, rewarding and affecting album yet.