Hey, wizard peeps! I hope you all had a good LeakyCon, to those able to attend the shindig in Portland. I am writing this on the eve of the con, so if I did anything really awkward like accidentally broke one of the drums, or vom’d on Maureen Johnson, or mistook Joe DeGeorge’s cries for help after he strangled himself with the microphone cord and did nothing to help him, or mistook someone’s hand for Snitchwich, then I apologize. In advance. Retroactively? I dunno, timey-wimeys.

Anywho, I’d like to commemorate LeakyCon Portland by highlighting a local band – Luna’s Ceiling. Luna’s Ceiling is a dark electronic band closer to the house genre or the likes of Essence of Dittany or Icon of Coil, than more poppy wizardtronic bands like Ministry of Magic or Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Office, and is an interesting phenomena in the wizard rock community: while never achieving much notoriety or attention in the wrock fandom, David Anderson has achieved minor success in the local Portland electronic/house scene.  This is pretty unique for a wizard band, and when you listen to the music, it’s not hard to see why.

The first Luna’s Ceiling album, Friends!, hews a little closer to canon and do the idea of it being a Luna-centric band, with tasty jams like “Slashkilter” and “We Fly (Of Course)”. This is thumping, bass-and-drum heavy songs, made to be heard in a club or on the dancefloor. David’s voice is nothing to write home about, but that’s nothing entirely unheard of in this genre of electronica, and a combination of paranoid inflection and trippy filters tinge his voice with enough Luna-ness for the sound to work as a cohesive whole. The standout track is definitely “Lestrangelove”, a brutal and heart-breaking look into the relationship between Bellatrix and Rudolphus, something rarely explored in wizard rock, and makes the song very lyrically reminiscent of some of Split Seven Ways’ best work, which coming from me, is high praise indeed:

I didn’t love you, you never loved me

So it can’t really be jealousy

So why is it tearing me apart

To see the look you send his way

Puts this poison in my heart

When there’s nothing I can say

While it’s been removed from iTunes, you could probably track down Friends! if you tried hard enough, and for fans of Luna, Lestranges, or electro-house music, it is definitely worth it. The follow-up album, however, is well-worth being checked out by any wizard rock fan. Surprise and Scatter is an album that sits somewhere in my Top 10 Wizard Rock Albums of all time, excises all the flaws of the first Luna’s Ceiling disc, and accentuates the positives. David is joined by the female vocals of Kaitlin Rose (and also possibly Ariel Rathbun – whose vocals ended up on the album is a little nebulous), and the synths are juicier and the basses and drums heavier than ever.

This time around, things get a little more meta, but not in the usual vein of meta-wrock. In Surprise and Scatter, while there are some rather obtuse tracks like “Auror” (note – “obtuse” does not mean “bad” – it just means that the track is pretty much about being an Auror and that’s it), many of the tracks partake in the lyrical exercise of magic as metaphor, and David has said that there’s a lot of himself in the SaS lyrics, as well as wizard stuff. “Obliviate” and “Reducto” do this especially, with the songs being able to be interpreted both as songs just about spells and their effects, but also as exploration of real-world things, like entropy, or the endless march of time, or PTSD, all the while sounding like some of Icon of Coil’s best. “Obliviate” is especially angsty, and is a really satisfyingly angry song about dealing with trauma:

Please hold these dreams at bay

Just take my mind away

I can’t face what I’ve done

Bring me oblivion

Help me forget the things I’ve seen

Take this memory from me

“Hide No More” and “Imagination” take a more fanfiction approach to things, describing two separate what-ifs. “Hide No More” is a satisfyingly rebellious song about tearing down the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy, and “Imagination” is a delightfully steampunk track about a new age of the wizarding world – “born of spell and steel”, with instrumentals that perfectly bring to mind thumping pistons and clanking gears. But the great thing is that these songs are not couched in specifics, meaning that the lyrics can be equally enjoyed by wizards and muggles alike. While “Hide No More” is a song that I can easily imagine a punk wizard kid listening to while wearing his modified robe-hoodie and waiting for the train from Platform 9 3/4, it also could easily be interpreted as a song simply about not hiding from society anymore, be it something like coming out to your friends and family as queer, or wearing your nerd cred with pride, or even just getting out of the house and interacting with some fellow humans.

“Imagination” beautifully paints a picture of a steampunk wizarding world, but it also expresses some fear at the increasingly fast march of technology, especially in the wake of all this news about such technological travesties as drone strikes and government surveillance and the XBox One. My favorite track, however, is “Illumination”, with one of the catchiest instrumental hooks in all of wizard rock, an absolutely perfect electronic percussion section, and one of David’s best vocal performances. Of all the songs on the album, “Illumination” is probably the most cloaked in vagaries, but I personally interpret it as a song about how fiction, and characters that are important and meaningful to us (especially, in this case, Luna Lovegood), can help us deal with the problems of the real world, and see our trials in a new light:

She brings me illumination

Shine the light inside – illumination!

Seriously, go check this song out.

Unfortunately, while they played some successful local shows, and Surprise and Scattered was well-reviewed by the local scene, there hasn’t been much news on the Luna’s Ceiling front, and a hard drive crash in December of 2012 has postponed an upcoming EP, seemingly indefinitely. Still, at only five smackeroonis, Surprised and Scattered is well worth your money, and all of Luna’s Ceiling’s work deserves to be checked out. Hell, it’s so good you might even want to brave checking out their MySpace page!

Okay, that might have been a bit hyperbolic…