Moon Apple – Four Pillars
Four Pillars
Moon Apple
EP
Electronic
Louis Pelingen
May 8, 2025
Thank you! Your submission has been received!
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.
May 8, 2025
Tracks in this feature
Tracks in this release
Our existence is limited. To find our destiny, we pray to the stars for answers. The fate of us all is in celestial hands: this is what defines Astrology. The idea that multiple astrological and metaphysical figures bestow blessings upon us is embedded across various cultures and traditions. Yet, it creates conflict between the discussion of fatalism and free will. A clash between humanity and divinity. Can we change our destiny? Or do these celestial forces construct our entire lives? .
Moon Apple is no stranger to these questions, but what started on her 2020 album is now explored even deeper within her recent work, Four Pillars. Its name is directly inspired by the Four Pillars of Fate, a Chinese astrological practice that determines the destiny of a person through two sexagenary cycle characters. The element and the animal assigned to the person’s birthdate factor into how their fate will be written.
In questioning this concept, Moon Apple makes use of pan-Asian instrumentation, fracturing and sampling them to form a vividly sonorous soundscape. Creating beds of vivid landscapes that accompany the spiritual animals whose names comprise the tracklist.
Seance I – Water Snake brings tranquil strings through bubbling rhythms; a candid melody slithers between bright electronic instrumentation. Bounding onward then is Seance II – Earth Rabbit and its bountiful layers of swift drums, graceful woodwinds, and energetic juvenile vocals that indicate the rabbit’s ravenous speed, power and positivity.
After a brief pillar featuring Dédé Chen, the elemental animals continue to spawn on Seance III – (F)ire Tiger and Seance IV – Metal Dragon. The former song embodies the animal’s ferocity through buzzing synths that build to a rumbling wall of noise, and the latter emphasises the grandeur of the dragon through cascading keys that twinkle and lumber. A meticulous choice of tones declares these animals’ majesty, yet fickle textures and pure emotional moments shake any notion of omnipotent enlightenment. These are true animals, spiritual but mortal in their grace.
What these spirit animals guard are the pillars. A stoic presence throughout the album, each foreboding in their own right. Moon Apple unleashes verbose melodies as a means of putting her foot down. Interrogating these metaphysical figures, embracing personal agency. Pillar I – Major Force Majeure begins the journey with hazy atmospherics, instilling a meditative buildup for Moon Apple’s vocalisations to take centre stage. “I guess we just can’t help ourselves”. It’s a gleaming plea to take control of fate’s strength, releasing it exponentially into the cosmos.
Pillar III – Ride the wind and make it bigger and Pillar IV – Mantra Major Force are a result of that release, emboldening conscious change over otherworldly faith. Ahreum Lee’s addition to the former’s fantastical instrumentation gives a stately presence to the scenery, her words steering the winds into a vast storm. The latter then closes our spirit journey, waves of haphazard synths and pounding percussions don’t efface Moon Apple’s weary voice. Her mantra of “you can’t stop me” only becomes self-possessed, the belief that human change is at the core of it all.
Upon encountering these divine animals and ominous pillars, we find the answer to the underlying conflict of Four Pillar’s in its humanly vivid soundscape. Fully controlling the powerful elements, Moon Apple bends them to unite fractured textures and bring about grand crescendos at her very will. A momentous demonstration of humanity’s agency. Breaking us away from the ancient notions of fatalism that shackles us all.
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpeg)
.webp)
.webp)
