Hear Yoko Ono’s Trippy New Collaboration With the Moonlandingz
Yoko Ono opens up “This Cities Undone,” a spacey new song by the Moonlandingz, by telling listeners to “wake up.” She continues to sing trippy vocal lines throughout the rest of the song, which sports a funky, upbeat drum part and miasmas of noise that surround a chant-like chorus. The band features members of Fat White Family and the Eccentronic Research Council, and its album, Interplanetary Class Classics, was co-produced by Ono’s son, Sean Lennon.
“The Moonlandingz are one of the most important new British bands today and I am very proud of Sean,” Ono tells Rolling Stone of why she participated in the project. “I was surprised what a good job he did.”
“The Moonlandingz are multi-dimensional, multi generational, multi-faceted and infinitely capable,” Lennon says. “They don’t even really exist and they’re still one of the best bands I’ve ever worked with. For a conceptual rock star, Johnny Rockets – a.k.a. [Fat White Family’s] Lias Saoudi – has got his feet on the ground, that ground just happens to be on the moon, for the Moonlandingz have officially landed.”
Interplanetary Class Classics, which comes out March 24th, also features appearances by the Village People’s Randy Jones and the Human League’s Phil Oakey, among others. Lennon also played guitar, bass and drums on the LP. The band wrote and recorded the album in Sheffield, England, and New York. Frequent Flaming Lips producer Dave Fridmann mixed the album.
The band has previously released videos for “Black Hanz” and “Sweet Saturn Mine,” both of which were directed by the Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger’s Charlotte Kemp Muhl. The Moonlandingz will be touring in the U.K. and Europe in March and April, and will play a U.S. date on May 11th at Brooklyn’s Rough Trade.