Moonlight Breakfast is certainly a must-see band. Their original approach to creating music is based on mixing together different ingredients – Electro, Nu-Jazz, Swing, and Balkan Beat. And the result is what you can expect from a talented mixologist – a cocktail with an interesting and unique taste that will make you want to dance and feel happy.
The trademark of this groups’ shows are the conceptual visuals that are fully synchronized with their music, representing the band’s style and turning them into a unique experience. Their first ever show was in their native country, Bucharest when they were the warm-up show for 35,000 people before Jamiroquai. It was a great start to their career. At the moment, Moonlight Breakfast has two successful albums under their belt and a lot of gigs all over the world, helping them to form a strong fan base.
The band is in a really good shape, focused on the future and has a lot of creative plans, helping them to have fun from the thing they enjoy most of all in life – making music. Having gone through a few changes, the band is currently a trio, with lead singer and frontwoman Christie, her husband and the main mastermind of this musical engine, Bazooka, on drums, keys and clarinet, and Adita on keys, guitar and sampler.
After a really busy summer full of shows all over Europe and their first US tour, Moonlight Breakfast frontwoman Christie finally found time for an interview with all-andorra.com in which she talked about her most memorable shows, the band’s musical roots and inspirations, future plans and their view on the possibility of performing in Andorra someday.
Interview: Dmitry Tolkunov
It seems like you had a busy summer with many gigs! And not only this summer – you are touring regularly and doing different types of gigs – big festivals and cozy musical clubs. What kind of shows do you enjoy most of all?
Yes, we’ve been keeping busy. We love performing so we have a lot of fun every time we’re on stage. Performing has been a memorable experience since the very beginning. Our first show was opening for Jamiroquai in front of 35,000 people. Though memorable, we weren’t really able to enjoy it that much since we were really stressed out. It was my first show ever so I was really nervous. I remember I couldn’t even sit up straight for the 2 hours in-between sound check and stage time.
Since then, we’ve had the opportunity to perform in all sorts of venues in different countries and the best thing about that is the fact that we can say we were lucky enough to get the same love and energy from the audience: be it big or small, no matter where we were in the world. It’s part of the reason we have a song on our second album saying, “We might be different, but we’re more the same”.
We definitely enjoy both kinds of shows: we maybe find the smaller gigs a bit more relaxing but are thrilled to be able to put on big shows that allow us to think bigger in regard to how we can use visuals and lighting to create an experience for the audience. For that show in Bucharest, we had a 23,000m2 visual show, which is crazy if you think about it.
The visual aspect of the show is the serious part of what you are doing. Can you please tell us more about it?
Beginning with our 4th show (7 years ago), we added visuals to our performance. We started working with the talented 3D mapping engineers from Les Ateliers Nomad, which is a Romanian company specialized in mapping and 3D projections.
Our visual show consists of a mix between abstract visual elements and synchronized short videos of each band member playing, projected onto circles of different dimensions, suspended above the stage. It looks different every time, as we’ve always had a different set-up, customized to the venue we played in. The great thing about it is we can have the show in small, intimate venues as well as large venues. It’s become something like a trademark for our shows.
Your music is a real mix of styles – jazz, music from the 20’s, and electronic. What kind of music inspires you and what bands and artists from the modern scene do you really like?
Our music playlist is constantly changing and it is very diverse. We’ve actually had the chance to share the stage with some of the artists we like. We’re inspired by all the music that we’ve listened to and loved so far. That is a lot of music. With some of the bands that we really like we were happy enough to do some collaborations together. One of them is Golan, they are good friends of ours and we were really happy to watch them grow. It’s very frequent that we are invited to perform at the same events. We actually remixed one of their songs a while back. As Moonlight Breakfast we are pretty much focused on sharing our take on things, however, Bazooka works with many different artists. So you can definitely hear his influence on other artists’ tracks.
What are your next musical plans – new album, singles, videos?
We are focused on finishing our 3rd album, planning some video shoots, planning the release tour and our first shows in the UK. Keeping it short though, there is so much to do!
You have a side project with more club and dance-oriented remixes. Can you please tell us about it, how did this idea come about?
That actually started by accident. We were doing a single release and Bazooka also made a remix for it. At first, we only had one for Shout and then for Hello and then Bazooka kept going and after a while, we had a whole set. We thought it was really cool and had a different vibe, so we thought it would be really interesting for us to actually perform the remixes. We even shot 3 videos.
Go Get It REMIX
Shout REMIX
We like experimenting, so playing around with the same songs and making them sound different is a lot of fun, that’s why we ended up adding 2 more types of shows to our list: The REMIXES Set (Samplers, Keys, Bass, Vocals) and The Acoustic Set (Acoustic Guitar, Cocktail Drum Kit, Clarinet, Megaphone)
I feel like Dancing Acoustic in Vienna
Lovesick Acoustic in Cannes
Can you please tell us about the meaning and idea behind the unusual name of the band?
The name of the band was actually an activity when we started writing music. We had breakfast under the moonlight (mostly in our studio). Bazooka and I have a son and he was around 2 when we started writing the first songs. Every night after our son went to sleep we went into our home recording studio and started working, thus the moonlight breakfast. Nighttime was the beginning of our working “day”.
What is your musical background? What did you do before Moonlight Breakfast?
Bazooka was a musician ever since he can remember. His parents were his music theory and clarinet teachers. He played in many, many bands after graduating the National University of Music in Bucharest. He worked and still works as a music writer and producer for different artists, as well as producing music for film and commercials.
Adita had to make a choice when we started playing. He was a successful actor so he had to choose between acting and music, as the schedule wouldn’t allow both. He had played guitar in a couple of bands before, but mostly just for fun, so we’re really happy he chose to be a full-time musician.
I have always loved music and but thought I would never be able to perform in front of a crowd. Bazooka and I had written music for other artists as well as commercials before (we still do that), but it wasn’t until Moonlight Breakfast that I started performing.
You have been already in many places all over the world for gigs. Do you have some favorite ones?
We were lucky enough to come across a great audience in every single country that we’ve been to. This year we had our first 3 US shows and were blown away by the energy of the crowds. We have to also mention this year’s gig at Sierre, in Switzerland for the Week-end au bord de l’eau Festival. The entire festival team was really amazing, and the views there were breathtaking.
Have you ever been to Andorra? Do you know anything about the country? And would you like to perform here if there was the possibility to do so?
We would love to perform in Andorra. We were just talking about its breathtaking views while waiting for your call. We always try to make time to visit wherever we go, so we would need to book a couple of extra days. We could also use some time off and I’ve read the Andorran spa is spectacular.
