Two people, one roof, one deadline: how In The Moonlight almost didn't happen

I have been sitting with Mia's In The Moonlight since it landed on Star Creature Universal Vibrations, and it has not left my rotation.

Miami vocalist Mia and Toronto producer Gil Masuda first connected in 2020 through Star Creature's Tim Zawada, and the song that came out of it, Love Me Right, turned into a modern boogie anthem almost overnight.

Five years later they finally finished the album that song promised.

They didn't make it easy on themselves. Gil flew to Miami to record, and a tight run of sessions kept stretching because they fell behind schedule.

He ended up staying at Mia's place the entire time. Two people, one roof, one deadline, no room to decompress. By his own account they were together so much they started getting on each other's nerves, and by the end neither wanted to use anything recorded in those final days.

Mia was doing this with a toddler and a full time job, nothing like the isolated bedroom sessions that produced Love Me Right in the first place.

She has said she was scared of being a one hit wonder. Gil has said this was the record that had him thinking about walking away from music altogether.

Gil would play me the mixes in the middle of it all, the two of us grabbing Chinese food on Spadina and sitting in his beat up Volkswagen Jetta while a song was still finding its shape.

I kept telling him the same thing every time. He had found a sound I hadn't heard before. There's a whole different era living inside this record, in the drums especially. Everything is left unquantized on purpose, kick and snare sitting slightly unsynchronized instead of locked to the grid.

Gil has done just enough mistake proofing to make it sound quirky, almost juvenile, and somehow perfect. Two people who sound like they never left the 80s, who found the simplicity and the novelty of that era without ever letting it sound cheap.