First brought to our attention through Busy P's Ed Banger Records, UK-based musican Mickey Moonlight has come a long way with with the launch of his debut album this winter. After releasing his catchy single 'Close to Everything', as remixed by The Martin Brothers - which comes after a past of working with the likes of Zongamin, Riton, and Marina Gasolina - the new LP is out now on Ed Banger. Download a free track from him, 'The Psilocybin Bars' HERE.

Dazed Digital: Some of the names of the tracks on your album are fairly mental, what were the influences behind it all?
Mickey Moonlight: My biggest influence in making the album was science fiction authors rather than musicians. To me the album is like a collection of images, fragments of stories. There's tales of biotech companies, artificial lovers, voluntary euthanasia, cosmic ambivalence, Discordian folk songs, time travel field recordings and psychedelic pattern-music.

DD: Was it difficult to choose what went into the album or was it a fairly natural process?
Mickey Moonlight: I recorded about 3 times as many songs as are on the album. But it's important to me that the album is short, so "edit yourself mercilessly" was, and always remains, good advice. It wasn't too difficult to choose, but there were lots of songs that I haven't used which are perhaps more pop-y and dance-y. It was important to me that the album was an idiosyncratic record. My next album I intend to be much more beat heavy. The only thing that was slightly sad about the brutal edit was losing the work of guests. There an unused song with a bass-line from Zongamin that I love. There were 2 more songs with Sandro Perri singing on, another with Marina Gasolina, the list goes on.

DD: Where do you draw your musical inspirations from?
Mickey Moonlight: I guess these are some of the musicians I'm influenced by... Klaus Nomi, Sun Ra, Mariko Mori, David Bowie, Fella Kuti, Brian Eno, Kool Keith, Mike Cooper, P-Funk, King Sunny Ade, Adrian Sherwood, Laurie Anderson, General Strike, Sergei Di Pietro, The Legendary Stardust Cowboy, Kwadwo Donkoh, Can, Poppin Pete, Coil, Les Baxter, Prince Paul, Cluster, Jon Hassell, Konrad Plank, Daniel Miller, Sly Stone, Nino Nardini, Vangelis, Christian Fennesz, David Byrne, Kraftwerk, Lauire Spiegel, Martin Denny, Moondog and Roger Roger.

DD: What's next for you now?
Mickey Moonlight: I'm DJing lots. Finishing producing the Hypnolove album for Record Makers. Help with the Zongamin album. A few interesting remixes. Then I want to record my next album, which I intend to do really quickly. I'm writing things at the moment.