Moon Diagrams

Moon Diagrams serves as the outlet for Deerhunter co-founder and drummer Moses Archuleta, whose work shifts between hazy ambient techno and slower dream pop textures. Archuleta assembled vintage samples and misty atmospheres into compelling collages on the 2017 debut album Lifetime of Love, then sharpened the project’s rhythmic focus with the 2019 Trappy Bats EP. The 2024 release Cemetery Classics incorporated additional voices and elements yet retained the project’s distinctive blend of experimental pop and electronics.

Archuleta launched the solo effort after Deerhunter issued its 2007 album Cryptograms. Although he intended to develop further songs for the group, only “Nothing Ever Happened” found a home on the 2008 album Microcastle. Sporadic composition continued until 2012, when personal upheaval including the dissolution of his marriage prompted renewed activity. Moon Diagrams first surfaced in 2015 with the cassette Care Package, issued through Geographic North’s Sketch for Winter series and containing a version of Sarah McLachlan’s “Sweet Surrender.” Archuleta also supplied a track to the label’s 2016 Halloween anthology Death on the Hour: Aural Apparitions from the Geographic North.

Sonic Cathedral handled the European release of the debut full-length Lifetime of Love in mid-2017, while Geographic North issued it elsewhere; the record had taken a decade to complete and interwove thrift-store samples, field recordings, and influences ranging from disco to ambient techno. Two remixes appeared that November, extending the album’s disorienting atmosphere. The 2019 mini-album Trappy Bats presented three extended pieces alongside reworkings by Shigeto, Angel Deradoorian, and Jefre Cantu-Ledesma. Archuleta began shaping his follow-up that same year, initiating the process in Tokyo while drawing from sources that included Daft Punk’s Homework, sculptor Richard Serra, Faust, and late-period Leonard Cohen. Cemetery Classics arrived in June 2024 via a co-release from Sonic Cathedral and No Gold, the label run by Liars’ Angus Andrew, and included performances by James Ford, Gang Gang Dance’s Josh Diamond, Cindy Lee’s Patrick Flegel, and Anastasia Coope.