With their debut EP Springtide Moonride, Tora Luna showcase just how much potential they have. A sonic ecosystem built on collaboration, curiosity, and a refusal to follow convention. The indie collective, led by Alex Broadgate and Dominic Johnson, has spent the past year assembling a vibrant tapestry of voices, genres, and stories that feel both refreshingly unpolished and thoughtfully layered.
From dreamy jangle pop to reverb-soaked surf rock and intimate chamber ballads, Springtide Moonride resists easy categorization, yet never loses its emotional throughline and its organic, folk undercurrent. As comparable to Bombay Bicycle Club as it is to Sufjan Stevens, the EP is a testament to the duos musicality and their ability to get the most out of the artists they collaborate with.
We caught up with Dom and Alex of Tora Luna to dig deeper into the process behind the EP, the creative dynamics of their ever-shifting collective, and the beauty of embracing imperfection in an increasingly polished world:
You’ve described Tora Luna as a “fluid musical collective.” What inspired you to build a project around such a collaborative and evolving structure instead of a traditional band format?
Dom – It’s a lot more fun to have loads of different voices in the room. Every time you write with somebody new it’s a whole new adventure because everyone has their own ways of working, their own quirks, their own strengths and weaknesses and their own unique voices. From a practical perspective – it’s much easier to say “Who’s free for this recording session we have booked next month?” then to say “Let’s have a recording session! When are all of us free?”.
Alex – to add to that, Dom and I started working together with the intention of being non-performing songwriters. We quickly built up a large catalogue of songs that we’d written together and had this idea of forming a collective as an outlet for all these songs we were writing. Personally, I feel like the idea of it being a fluid collective has given us a lot of creative freedom and eased the pressure of putting a label on the music we make.
‘Springtide Moonride’ features four different lead vocalists and a range of musical styles—how did you maintain a sense of cohesion across such a diverse and genre-fluid EP?
Dom – I think it helps a lot that there’s been a basic constant across it of Alex, me and Gus working together. On top of that, I think we choose who we work with based on a kind of stylistic affinity too. We should be fans of at least one band in common! And Gus of course spends a lot of time thinking about how to find that coherence. I have no idea how to describe how he does it, its just sort of magic really.
Alex – as Dom said, with the same three people playing on each track, I think there’s always going to be a subtle musical thread throughout, based on the way we play, interact with each other, choice of notes, limited number of instruments available to us at Gus’ studio. Plus our shared musical influences. Sonically, Gus did a fantastic job at tying it all together sonically. I remember a conversation we had after recording the third track, I think it was, and he said “I think I’ve cracked it, it’s surf rock that ties it all together”. But I’m sure that’s just one of the circles in the Venn diagram.
The EP feels very human and organic, especially with the live takes and lack of a click track. Was that a conscious decision from the beginning, or something that developed during recording?
Dom – It was very conscious from the start of the recording process, yes. When we did “Wait for Spring”, me Gus and Alex were sat in the room together and jamming around and we’d been talking a lot about AI and the future of art and the need to be as human as possible in a way that we thought AI never would be able to. This was maybe in 2023 or something so it was when Dall-E had only just come out and the writing was on the wall for glitzy, over-produced music – it’s something that a machine could probably do better. And again it’s far more fun to not play to a click track, but instead to just give a nod to say “we’re coming in now!” rather than counting everything out. Instead of spending 20% of your energy thinking “am I speeding up?” you can spend it instead thinking about what emotion you’re trying to bring.
Alex – I think the moment that highlights this approach best is the final chorus of “Wait For Spring”. All sense of tempo has completely gone out the window and it feels like you’re watching a bicycle or a car in an old cartoon show slowing down to a halt and all of the parts are falling off, until it’s just the cartoon character holding the steering wheel and sitting on the ground. I really love that moment of the song.
The song ‘Olive Branch’ stands out both musically and lyrically—can you walk us through how that track came together and what it represents within the context of the EP?
Dom: Yeah, I reckon Olive Branch is pretty much the pinnacle of what we’d wanted to achieve. Something fun and a little bit silly. Alex had this riff that sounded a bit AC/DC but, being an indie band, we of course had to jangle it up a bit. We were thinking about what approach to take with the lyrics and came across the idea of having a “joking apology” for something unserious, and then shelved that idea for writing instead some lyrics about someone who thinks they’re owed forgiveness and is offended that they aren’t given it. Almost the opposite of the character in “I’d Forgive You In A Heartbeat”! The recording process for it was really tough actually. It’s very folky in that the phrase lengths just sort of follow whatever the vocals are doing, but if you try to count out the lengths of the bars it’s a nightmare to keep up, and so we just sort of rocked up with this thing thinking it would be very easy to play but it ended up being a challenge once we brought the drums in! And then we were trying to untangle it from the AC/DC hair rock thing a lot, and so we spent maybe half a day just arranging it. When we came back from a late lunch ready to lock in the final take with only a couple of hours left of the day, we listened back and were pretty crushed when we realised it wasn’t hitting the mark. We listened to some Vampire Weekend records trying to figure out how they made it sound so FUN and the reimagined the whole song, finishing up in the very nick of time as the clock struck 7pm to mark the end of the day of recording the live take! And then day 2 was a much better day of comping, dubbing the guitar layers, BVs and vocals and by the end we had what you hear now!
But it was probably the track where we stuck to the philosophy of the process the least and yet the result was probably what we envisioned the results to be the most. Make of that what you will!
Alex: I’d go one step further and say it’s a very silly track haha. It plays with the listener’s expectation from start to finish. The particular track that we listened to give us some “playful” inspiration was “Finger Back” by Vampire Weekend. I’ve always loved the interplay between the drums, acoustic guitar, organ, bass and vocals. It’s such an incredible arrangement and the musical equivalent of “goofiness” in my opinion. The kind of song you’d dance to to cheer your partner up when they’re really mad at you haha. We played this one live at our EP release party on Saturday 12th July and it was so much fun with a lot of audience interaction. I was saying to Dom that it’s such a beautiful feeling to flashback to the moment where you come up with this sweet little tune on a piano then see a roomful of people dancing along to it. I suspect we will try to write a few more Olive Branch’s for our next EP, with the live set in the back of our mind.
How did working in Gus White’s countryside barn studio shape the sound and spirit of the record? Did the rural environment influence the creative process?
Dom – There is so much to be said for removing distractions (but alas not the distraction of the local pub) and knuckling down to focus on the music while still providing opportunities for rest. Being able to put in a day’s work, have a meal together, have a drink together, be in bed by midnight and then stroll over for breakfast at 9 the next morning – all of that I think contributes to a spirit of dedication to the process of creating.
Alex – Absolutely. You don’t get much phone signal there either and I think this plays a part. From the moment we get there, we are doing pretty much everything together, except showering; talking about different recording methods or performing techniques we could try out. It feels like you fully immerse yourself in the music for a few days. It’s such a wonderful experience.
You’ve cited everyone from The Beach Boys and Vampire Weekend to Mac DeMarco and Bombay Bicycle Club as influences. How do you navigate paying homage to these inspirations while carving out a unique sound for Tora Luna?
Dom – For me it’s not really conscious to be honest. You can’t help but be inspired by everything you’ve ever listened to and loved. Perhaps some of the time we’ll share music with each other if the other isn’t familiar with it – for example I wasn’t really into Bombay Bicycle Club or Vampire Weekend, and so Alex might show me a song of theirs to kind of say “I like how its chaotic in this bit” or something – and then that helps me to understand what he means. But other than that… I don’t feel as though I’m deliberately trying to pay homage to The Beatles when I suggest putting in a close harmony – its just that it’s there as an impulse because of a lifetime of listening to The Beatles (for example)
Alex – yep, it’s exactly as Dom said. We’re never saying let’s make a Beach Boys record to pay tribute to them. We just use musical references as a way to express the ideas that we are trying to explain to each other. I think it’s fair to say that we’re very conscious not to make it too close to their sound. We always try to add plenty of our own personality in there too.
Given the EP’s emphasis on emotional honesty and real-life inspiration, what kind of stories or moments sparked some of these songs—especially ones like ‘Why Wouldn’t You Say So?’ or ‘I’d Forgive You In A Heartbeat, But I Can’t Forgive Myself’
Dom – I’d Forgive You in a Heartbeat is quite a simple one really. I was just talking with a friend over a cuppa and we were saying how its funny how quickly we will forgive other people for sometimes fairly serious things because a friendship or a relationship or colleague-ship is more important than a single hurt feeling. And yet at the same time, when we feel we’ve wronged someone else we’ll dwell on it forever and not be able to forget about it – maybe even be kept up at night by it – even if it’s something fairly abstract like “stealing your thunder” or “forgetting your birthday”. So in that case it’s not a specific moment but more of a feeling.
Alex – what a wonderful question. I can explain “Why Wouldn’t You Say So?” in more detail. I’d arrived early to a songwriting session and it was just myself and Dom in the studio for a couple of hours before Ellie arrived. Dom had asked if I had any lyric or concept ideas and I’d said that I’ve always wanted to make a classic soul record to pay tribute to Motown girl groups like The Supremes or The Marvelettes. In terms of lyrics, I said that I was quite shocked that I’d recently had a conversation with one of my best friends whose partner had quite suddenly broke up with him because of a series of inconsiderate comments that he’d made. The thing that shocked me the most was that this was the first time she’d expressed these feelings. She hadn’t given him “a warning” as it were and said that some of the earlier comments were piling up and eating away at her. It was a “one strike and you’re out” situation and Dom and I came up with the hook “Why Wouldn’t You Say So?”
With the EP’s title Springtide Moonride coming out of a group discussion, what does that phrase mean to you now that the project is finished and about to be released into the world?
Dom – I dunno what we were thinking to be honest! I think we just wanted something that felt whimsical.
Alex – for me it’s got the playfulness and the dreaminess in it that is quickly becoming a key part of our identity. There’s a lot of bright, uplifting, playful, chirpiness to the music (Spring) and there’s the psychedelic, dreamy, wavy element (Moon). I suppose it does feel a bit like we are on a ride as well, it could finish with this EP or it could go on for a long time and we don’t know who is going to get on or off the ride in the meantime. Finally, there’s a subtle reference to the artist name which translates to “Tiger Moon”.
Listen to the latest single below and keep an eye out for the EP out this Friday.
