The Aliens new album ‘Luna’ is a difficult beast. The follow up to their 2007 debut, ‘Astronomy for Dogs’, ‘Luna’ is a sprawling behemoth of a record, it’s songs span out in front of you creating rolling, expansive sonic panoramas. A third of the records tracks flow out well past the 6 minute mark, two making double figures, it is safe to say that this is not a primped and preened MTV pop record, where running over the radio sanctioned 3 minute timeline is tantamount to creative blasphemy. It is coincidentally, and possibly for exactly that reason, a mesmeric, psych tinged, honeycomb folk-pop masterpiece. It’s the album that The Aliens should have been able to make first time around but were perhaps not allowed to, where ‘Astronomy for Dogs’ felt muted, like a curtailed version of what could have been, ‘Luna’ runs free. Recorded in the remote Scottish home studio of chief Alien, Beta Band co-founder and Lone Pigeon man Gordon Anderson, the relaxed recording schedule the band adopted allowed them to explore each track with the focus and willful experimentation upon which they thrive.

“It (Luna) was actually a lot easier to make than ‘Astronomy…’ because with ‘Astronomy…’ we decided to do it in a largish studio in london so the pressure was on and we actually only had a week or two to actually record. So we didn’t get that much time to experiment and do what we usually do with tracks,” recalls John looking back to the first time The Aliens committed their singular space folk vision to tape. “ Whereas with ‘Luna’ we recorded it in Gordons cottage up in Scotland and spent 6 months on it. So much more time to experiment with tracks and scrap tracks and add things to tracks, and I suppose as well because Gordon’s slightly fragile at times so when it comes to big cities like London I think he found it really difficult getting to the studio and using the tube. Just moving through all the people and the hassle of a hot summer in london. Whereas with ‘Luna’ he was comfortable in his own fishing village and in his own cottage.” The fragility that John is alluding to reflects the well documented history of mental illness attached to Anderson, who spent the best part of 10 years institutionalised. It is something that has been with him since the Beta Band and inevitably informs both the process and the music of The Aliens, evoking further comparisons with other musical explorers who have flirted with the darker sides of the human psyche such as Brian Wilson and Syd Barrett, who both ploughed into similar psychedelic layered pop.  ‘Luna’ is an incredibly expansive record of glorious 60s tinged folk, songs like ‘Billy Jack’ and ‘Bobby’s Song’ stretching out forever creating giant sonic wormholes that suck the listener deep inside, yet it hangs around a uniquely intimate core, heard, as one might imagine, almost by accident, like a garden hopping youth pressing their ear to a window of Brian Wilson’s studio during the creation of ‘Smile’. It feels like you’re a voyeur to a moment of aural conception, the tinkerings of flawed genius.

There seems scant danger of any self indulgent moaning taking over the sheer triumphant splendor of the songs from ‘Luna’. They pitch and glide, washing various hues over you, this is the sound of joy projected through a prism of stereotyped Scottish dour, songs like ‘Blue Mantle’ and ‘Boats’ find you just wanting to wallow in their sonics as they fall over you like giant aural snowdrifts. So what has been inspiring these mini-opera’s? A lot of salmon and cinema it would seem. Certainly tales of the various recording sessions that stretch back to 2007 have the band debating the finer points of salmon preparation with at least equal veracity to the benefits of diving chord changes. “After you’ve spent all day playing music and sitting in front of pro tools you really don’t want to listen to other peoples music, so we’re always watching films and there’s a lot of ‘Luna’ that’s more influenced by films than music or anything like that. The last film I saw at the cinema was Hell Boy 2 so we love the art house films and the mainstream movies as well.” The Aliens are definitely art house but with ‘Luna’ they may well have the sleeper hit of the year.