Moon Duo releasing live set, play The Fillmore in October

(Photo by Magdalena Wosinska)

Before heading out on a European tour in the summer of 2013, Moon Duo‘s Sanae Yamada and Ripley Johnson decided to make a change and for the first time ever, they hired a drummer, John Jeffrey, who got the job sight unseen after a chance meeting with the band’s manager in Berlin. The newly minted trio soon gelled during day-in-day-out shows in the heat of the European summer – so much so that they asked engineer Mattia Coletti to record the Italian leg of the tour.

The result? Live in Ravenna, due out August 19 via Sacred Bones, with both a limited, one-time vinyl pressing of 2,000 and digital copies, of course. And they’re touring too – yup, they’re playing San Francisco’s legendary Fillmore Auditorium on October 16, part of a 35-plus show tour of Europe and North America, including dates with The Horrors on this side of the Pond.

“Ravenna was memorable for a number of reasons, the most prominent being the really very intense heat, and the setting – Hanabi has an outdoor stage on the beach, the Adriatic Sea only meters away,” Yamada explains. “The show that night, and the recording of it, sort of encapsulates everything that was happening at the time – the heat wave, the journey, and the shift in the energy and composition of the band.”

Pre-order Live in Ravenna on iTunes, and then watch video of the trio killing “In The Sun” last summer in Cologne below, followed by the Live in Ravenna tracklisting and cover art, along with details on the band’s upcoming October gig at The Fillmore