Many of you may not have heard of this trio from New Jersey, but you soon will. Dan, Jack and Jemma came together for one purpose: to release their potent blend of infectious pop music to the masses. "Charming Gravity," their third full-length release is a cacophony of sputtering beats and warm, atmospheric textures brewed together with originality and spunk. The ambitious dual male/female vocals actually compliment each song as a whole, keeping the listener slightly off balance. Sure, they kept a low profile, for now, but recently I cornered the dubious trio into answering some of my usual hard-nosed questions. (By Dan Koven)

Side-line: . What would you say distinguishes Moon Rock from other modern electronic pop bands? Who are some of your influences and how much of that influence do you inject while composing?

Moon-Rock: . That's a great question. We really try to avoid any type of labellings' or categorization' in our music, so it's difficult to say what makes us different or similar to other bands. There are so many amazing bands out there right now, and so much great music. It is such a wonderful thing for all of these groups to be practicing self-expression through their art. We definitely find inspiration in a lot of this music, but it is definitely inspiration and not emulation. We mostly just create what we feel in the moment, regardless of what style or category it might fit into. Wow, our influences really run quite a long gamut. We are really just moved by anything that is beautiful and thought provoking. We love classical music' especially the Romantic era, and all the way back to Medieval music such as chanting and pure vocal music. Modern artists like Joy Division, New Order, Johnny Cash, Mr. Bungle, Cosmic Gate, Armand Van Helden, Sam Cooke' is this sounding crazy? We are definitely a bit eclectic! Also poets like Proust, Lautreamont and Shelley' great literary works. World music is also very inspiring. As far as putting these influences into our music, like we said before, it is more of a point of inspiration. Something moves you, and inspires you to create. So it is not so much of "Oh, let's make it sounds like this" as it is just a feeling that comes over you and makes you want to build something beautiful.

SL. What stylistic changes has the band endured since your debut in 2001, "Power To The People?" Your releases seem to be rather prolific; are you guys workaholics?

Mon-Rock. Workaholics' that's great!

Yes, we really do put quite a bit of time into our art, and there is a lot of new material coming out pretty quickly. It's not that we really sit around and think that we've got to put out another release, but we just love working together creatively so much that we crave to do it, and it kind of takes on a life of its own. There is always a new idea, and something to be done. We are constantly growing, and that definitely comes through in the music. The stylistic changes have basically been of two proponents. The first and most important is the emotional growth that we have been going through. The past few years have brought down some very heavy circumstances for all of us personally, and that has really affected our music in an amazing way, just to get through these things, and to have an outlet to release your feelings about them. And just everything going on in the world around us as well' it's constantly impacting us emotionally. The second change comes from technology. The constant growth in technology is amazing! This helps creatively in just making the process smoother, making the "technical" end of creating less time-consuming and more pleasing sonically. Technology just makes things easier, and gives us more time to create.

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