“Distance of the Moon,” the debut album from the duo of Nora Stanley and Benny Bock, is a collection of discrete jewels, each cut and polished in a different way. There’s almost no track on the album that’s like the others. The sounds and dynamic the two conjure (with a couple guests) from pretty simple components bring to mind music as disparate as jazz fusion, post rock, videogame soundtracks, mid-00s electronic music, and Aphex Twin piano pieces. It makes for a fascinating, captivating listen. “Distance of the Moon” is the kind of album that feels so pleasant while you’re listening to it—lively, entertaining, catchy, kinetic—but when you listen really closely and start to parse the choices Stanley and Bock make, the moves they make, you realize how creative it is and unexpected, how sui generis the album is.
“Assembling,” for instance, starts off with what sounds like someone determinedly playing a kalimba at the bottom of an empty thousand-foot well. It’s strikingly pretty on its own, and then percussion, bass, and Nora Stanley’s sax enter, and the track gains so much depth and complexity, like it’s being switched to high definition. Stanley’s sax playing here, like on the whole album, feels so amiable and approachable—even when she’s coming at a track from oblique angles (on “Two” for example) or lighting it up (“Like Smoke”)—there’s a real warm personality to it. I think the general warmth of the album is part of what I really enjoy about it—it’s easy to imagine sitting in a room with Stanley, Bock, and the other players and seeing and hearing their collective summoning of this music.
“Maurice” is another big highlight for me (along with “Peaches,” which sounds like the kind of quick tune you’d hear in a movie once and obsess over for weeks afterwards, and the title track, a heartfelt tune between the organ and sax where the two instruments sort of merge voices and drone together until the end); it starts with Bock’s ghostly piano and then the sax enters to double/shadow the piano. Horns and bass come in after a minute or so to widen the scope of the track. Bock’s playing on “Maurice” is enchanting, he’s got this little statement and variation on the melody halfway through that’s so fitting, and he keeps throwing in filigrees throughout the song. Bock and Stanley trade bits back and forth at the end, finishing and refinishing the song.