Utrecht-based Mark Lohmann has been releasing music as Moon Moon Moon since 2014, when his self-released debut album I Want! I Want! first appeared. Combing the intimacy of Elliott Smith's early work with the angular structures of Pinback and Broken Social Scene (not to mention a liberal dose of his own singular magic), Lohmann's music is warmly comforting and yet filled with that same sense of heart-melting despair that made the likes of Sufjan Stevens and Conor Oberst seem so relatably appealing.

Composed and recorded entirely at home, and slathered with the sort of sonic experimentation that can only come about from hours of unrestrained creativity, Moon Moon Moon's latest album Help! Help! is scheduled for release on 17 March via Dutch stable Tiny Room Records (also home to Guided by Voices' similarly-minded collaborator Todd Tobias). Watch the clip for album track Disintegration Loop in the player above, and read Lohmann's thoughts on the song and video here...

How the song came to be:

Mark Lohmann: "At a time of a little too much death in my life, I was listening to the Disintegration Loops by ambient/loop composer William Basinski a lot. Especially this one:

"The story behind them really intrigued me. Basically, they’re short loops that keep looping until they’re completely destroyed/disintegrated/dead.

"So one evening in December 2015, I was riding my bike during a heavy snowfall and listening to Disintegration Loops 1.1. After a while I started to sing some words on a melody that came to me while listening to the loop. I came up with most of the lyrics on my bike and then went inside and recorded my song on top of the loop – I kept adding things and after a while it became my own song, with Disintegration Loops 1.1 still audible in some parts."

What it's about:

"I guess the song is about not being able to let go of things that have passed. In the song and video, this is visualised as hands from the grave, popping up everywhere. Re-using a loop that had ‘died’/disintegrated is basically trying to take the loop out of its grave, which is in turn what the song is about."

Not wanting to get sued:

"I emailed Basinski to let him know I used his music to make my own and that I really loved his work. He was nice about it and said he liked the song but after some emails he insisted that I took Disintegration Loops 1.1 out of my mix. I respected this, of course, but it did make me a tad sad. Anyway, I recorded some weird flute with a lot of reverb and pitchshifting instead."

About the video:

"I recorded all the shots while I was visiting a friend. We went camping in the Lake District and it was raining almost 24/7, so it really was almost all black and white as in the video. Later, back home, I spent a lot of time choosing the right videos and just kind of started drawing on top of them – then I had a video."

Help! Help! is now available for pre-order from Tiny Room Records