Ava Luna

Multi-instrumentalist and engineer Carlos Hernandez established Ava Luna toward the end of the 2000s. At first the Brooklyn ensemble leaned on layered vocal harmonies, open-ended forms, and sharp percussive patterns, yet beginning with the 2014 album Electric Balloon the group steered its indie art funk toward progressively tighter structures. Three albums after that, the still more polished Moon 2 arrived in 2018 as a more collectively shaped statement, with Hernandez receding from his earlier central role.

The Brooklyn ensemble’s origins trace to Hernandez’s high-school bedroom, where he composed and tracked material under the solo moniker Ava. During college he encountered Julian Fader and Nathan Tompkins; together they altered the project’s name to Ava Luna, reasoning that “Ava” was probably already taken by a more prominent act somewhere. After graduation Hernandez worked as an engineer and pursued assorted small-scale noise and punk endeavors while Ava Luna intermittently surfaced. The self-released Lemming served as the group’s unofficial debut in 2007. With the 2009 homemade CD-R 3rd Avenue Island the band coalesced once more, this time spotlighting Hernandez on vocals alongside an assortment of additional singers and a stripped-down instrumental foundation of drums and synthesizers.

In 2010 the band issued the Services EP, now featuring a revised roster and a sound that moved further into the dense vocal harmonies associated with acts such as Dirty Projectors while the musical settings grew increasingly intricate and neo-soul-inflected. A first full-length, Ice Level, appeared in 2012. By then the lineup had stabilized around Hernandez on vocals and guitar, Fader on drums, Tompkins on synths, Ethan Bassford on bass, and the vocal trio of Felicia Douglass, Becca Kauffman, and Anna Sian. Ava Luna toured in support of Ice Level, including several dates opening for Twin Sister. The follow-up Electric Balloon surfaced in 2014, delivering a less unruly collection, and Infinite House followed in 2015 with an even more conventionally arranged set of art-funk and R&B-infused material.

After Infinite House several members pursued separate projects: Kauffman launched the performance-art endeavor Jennifer Vanilla, Douglass released music under the name Gemma, and Fader started Coffee. Fader and Hernandez also joined vocalist Nadia Hulett for the debut album by NADINE. In parallel, Hernandez and Fader produced and recorded for artists including Frankie Cosmos, Mr Twin Sister, and Speedy Ortiz. When a five-piece version of Ava Luna—Hernandez, Fader, Kauffman, Douglass, and Bassford—regrouped in late 2017, Hernandez adopted a reduced leadership position and Kauffman contributed her first song to the band. In March 2018 the group released a reinterpretation of Serge Gainsbourg’s Histoire de Melody Nelson; shortly afterward Douglass began touring with Dirty Projectors as percussionist and vocalist. The resulting album Moon 2 appeared that September. A still more restrained effort, it drew partial inspiration from the recurring chants and refrains found on a set of tapes by ’90s women’s-lib groups that Kauffman had introduced during the sessions.