Luna Shadows - 'The Nineties'
Luna Shadows draws on ‘The Nineties’ for inspiration on her quirky, DIY single and video game-themed visuals, taken from her upcoming debut album, ‘Digital Pacific’.
Luna Shadows drives warped video game sound samples and lofi percussive driven sounds into pop territory on ‘The Nineties’. There’s a sense of airlessness to the track’s layered production as Shadows explores her fears and anxieties through a sugary and slightly distorted vocal. But there’s a playfulness to the melodies here which gives the track a muscular fluidity.
"I never forget a fear, starting with my earliest visions of how I might go: falling into lava or quicksand, two scenes that the 90's video games of my childhood painted as fairly possible outcomes," Luna shares about the track. "I wrote this song at a time when I was experiencing such debilitating bouts of hyper vigilance that the simple act of leaving my home felt frightening: everything everywhere was out to get me. So many things could go wrong in a day: car accidents, shark attacks, lightning strikes, drowning, losing loved ones... I go through periods where I pull every and any nearby fear into focus. The attempt to fit as many of these fears as possible into an upbeat production for "The Nineties" was a very deliberate act intended to help me view myself with a lighter heart, to take back some control, and to laugh in the face of my anxious habits.”
With that in mind, darker, more oppressive tones are juxtaposed by lighter and gentler melodic textures, but Shadows doesn’t eliminate the seriousness of her feelings entirely, ending on the dark dark distorted mantra of the fear of “everyone leaving”. One that I’m sure many of us can relate to on an existential level.
’The Nineties’ is accompanied by a music video that channels 90s video game aesthetics, seeing Shadows become part of her own video game, trying to find her way through lava and quicksand. The video was self-directed and produced by Shadows on a green screen and shot on her iPhone. c
"The Nineties" is the latest single off Shadows' upcoming debut album 'Digital Pacific.'
Words of Karla Harris