Naarm duo Lunar Lagoon don’t posture, don’t mythologise, don’t pretend every track arrives fully formed and untouchable
When I sat across from Joe in the studio, I half-expected the kind of creative mystique we’ve been taught to associate with “serious” electronic artists - the guarded answers, the careful curation. Instead, he was open to everything: doubt, influence, scrapped songs.
“We’re quite moody,” he laughs, before admitting the new material is “a lot poppier… a bit of a weird jump, so hopefully we don’t lose that whole audience.” It’s that willingness to evolve publicly - to credit collaborators, to name influences, to say when you almost got it wrong - that makes Lunar Lagoon not just another exciting name out of Melbourne's mouth, but a band genuinely worth watching.
At the centre of Lunar Lagoon is a partnership that feels less like division of labour and more like mutual trust. Joe and Luke share the writing now, a balance that’s grown into itself over time. There’s no weird turf war over who did what - it’s that lack of preciousness that seems to power them.
When Joe admits that he wants to scrap a song, it’s Luke who insists they finish it - and, as it turns out, it becomes the favourite amongst friends who are trusted to hear it first. “Sometimes that’s what you need, another person.” In Lunar Lagoon, authorship isn’t about dominance; it’s about knowing when to step back and when to hold the line.
Joe’s upbringing in Birmingham threads quietly but decisively through Lunar Lagoon’s DNA. Raised on Jamaican music and old soul - “I didn’t have a choice really” - and only later stumbling into the extensive canon of UK electronic, the duo’s palette feels inherited rather than trend-chased. When Joe shrugs, “It’s like just old electronic. If you’re into like… Moby,” it undersells the lineage slightly; there’s a broader British tradition at play here.
Think Mount Kimbie’s refusal to stay pinned to one scene - emerging from post-dubstep only to dissolve into indie textures, live instrumentation and atmosphere. That same willingness to let genre blur, to let influence breathe instead of dominate, feels central to Lunar Lagoon. They’re not borrowing aesthetics wholesale; they’re participating in a lineage of artists who treat electronic music as porous - something that can absorb punk directness, indie vulnerability, and the low-end pulse of sound system culture without apology.
And maybe that’s what makes them such a compelling act to watch right now. In a city currently overflowing with talent, Lunar Lagoon stands out not by shouting the loudest, but by listening closely: to each other, to their influences, to the scene around them. There’s no fortress, no anxious guarding of authorship. Just two artists willing to evolve publicly, credit freely, and admit when they almost got it wrong.
In an industry that still romanticises solitary genius, Lunar Lagoon offers something far more interesting - proving that openness, collaboration and a deep respect for where you come from are in of themselves radical acts of creativity.
Words by Sabine Lee Cook