Interviews
John Moods Interview
Ahead of his show at The Old Church, John Moods talks Dreaming For Miles, artistic intuition, collaboration, and the possibility of deeper pop music.
18 Aug 2026
Ahead of his show at The Old Church on 5 September, John Moods speaks to Real Sounds about Dreaming For Miles, the value of artistic intuition, and making pop music with depth.
John Moods plays The Old Church, London, on Saturday 5 September 2026. Tickets are available from Real Sounds.
Dreaming For Miles gathers songs written across roughly a decade, from old demos to newer material. How did you decide which fragments still belonged together, and what did revisiting them reveal about the person who first wrote them?
First of all, thank you for this interview and for posing some thoughtful questions.
Any relationship lasting over a decade will eventually become something like a collection of old, dusty demos and some newer material. It’ll be made up of fragments that still belong together and others that don’t anymore. When we made the record, we acted pretty intuitively and worked on many ideas at the same time, but ultimately chose the ones that we re-recorded on tape during that time. So, in a way, we did capture them in a unifying technical process, even though the ideas all came from different moments in time.
It was very difficult to make music during that period of separation and it seemed rather crazy to do. Only in hindsight did the madness reveal itself as a good thing, and our intuition as something worth listening to.
The record was made with JJ Weihl during a period of separation, and frames music as a way of reshaping a relationship into friendship. What did collaboration make possible in that process that a private conversation could not?
This album was something we felt we had to do, and it was personal, and no one was able to help us with it. We tried giving it to two different people for mixing or additional production, but realized in the end that this had to be all done by us and us alone, no matter how crappy it may sound.
We had no idea if it would work, but it is beautiful to me now that we were both able to make that decision amidst the discomfort and confusion that existed at the time.
You’ve described writing as being led by feeling rather than concept. When you begin a John Moods song, what tells you that you have found the feeling worth following?
Oh, great question. It’s really, really hard. Again, it is intuition, and intuition feels to me like a very quiet voice. Usually it’s there in the beginning, and slowly gets overshadowed by thinking and the loud concepts of the mind.
So you may think your song is cool because you want to impress someone, or because it sounds like another cool artist, but whenever I had a special feeling about a song or where it should go, it was a very gentle kind of knowing.
To put it very simply, I think Leonard Cohen said something like this: if your own song almost makes you cry or if it makes you joyful, dance or scream, there’s a good chance there’s something there.
Your debut, The Essential John Moods, began as songs recorded on a phone while hiking along the Iberian coast. Do you still seek out restrictions or unfamiliar settings when you write, or has your relationship with spontaneity changed?
I still think back to that specific experience as one of the most magical moments of my own music creation, and I haven’t really done a pilgrimage like that since.
The problem with always choosing some magical location or activity to create music is that you can’t put any pressure on the muse to be there or not. I didn’t even plan to make music on that trip, but was suddenly overcome with this feeling of boundless freedom, presence, calm, and the technical possibility offered by GarageBand on my phone.
If I did another hike like that, expecting the same thing to happen, I am almost sure it wouldn’t. It’s a bit of a dance between creating fertile grounds for making music, but not being too attached to those magical moments or places.
A great song could probably be made in a dark, cold, wet, and spiky place. ;)
There is a quiet spaciousness in much of your music, even when the songs are built around strong melodies. How do you know when a track needs another idea, and when it needs room to breathe?
Thank you. I’ve never thought about that ever. Maybe it is because I am interested in meditation and spaciousness in myself as much as I love pop music.
My problem with pop music, especially in recent decades, is that it has become increasingly industrialized and feels soulless. It rarely talks about anything profound lyrically, and the musical constructions of those songs seem trivial and manipulative.
The way I envision pop music is that it could be stranger and deeper than this, like Kate Bush or Annie Lennox and so many others have done. Or a song that’s so pure and authentic that your soul knows it’s true, like Bonnie Raitt’s “I Can’t Make You Love Me,” which qualifies as a pop song.
I think it’s time to say how lame it all really currently is and maybe stop ironically going along with this insane commercialization of art.
Across The Essential John Moods, So Sweet So Nice, The Great Design, and now Dreaming For Miles, what has stayed constant in the project — and what feels newly possible?
Well, it’s always me, there are many constants in it, I’m sure. Some of them are even just the struggle to create something I am willing to release into the world.
So Sweet So Nice was an attempt to create a lighthearted record on themes of mortality. The Great Design centered on themes around wonder about the intelligence and mystery around us. And Dreaming For Miles is quite different of course, made up of songs about letting go in more or less direct ways.
So much still feels possible. I sort of know who I am by now musically and what I love, which feels really good, but at the same time I don’t feel many self-imposed limitations on what I could do or try.
Again, all that I want to nurture is my intuition, my quiet little voice, to tell me what my heart feels like pursuing. So I’m in a good phase with my art right now.
You have collaborated with The Zenmenn, Discovery Zone, and other artists while maintaining a very distinct solo voice. What do you look for in a collaborator, and what do you discover about your own work through collaboration?
I love collaborations! I always want to do them.
It’s easy for me to work in a group situation, and I love the shared excitement, the different creative results, and colliding with the unknown planet of another person who has spent so much of their life refining their skill or craft.
I learn so much every time I have a successful or unsuccessful collaboration. It does reflect back on my own work too, in interesting ways I think, but doesn’t directly influence it fully either.
You are bringing this new chapter to The Old Church in London. What kind of encounter do you hope to create between these songs, the room, and the audience on the night?
Well, I’m gonna be on tour with Magnus Bang Olsen from The Zenmenn, one of my favorite musicians in the whole world. The way he voices and plays keys is, to me, otherworldly — an incredible fusion of hard-learned musical skill, some god-given talent and the playful naivety of a child, true beginner’s mind.
It’ll be incredible. It’ll be intimate, something for the heart.
Your website closes its “About” section with Carl Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot passage. What keeps drawing you towards questions of scale, connection, and perspective — and how do those ideas find their way into a three-minute pop song?
I’ve addressed this a little bit before. Here are some great profound quotes from pop song lyrics just off the top of my head:
“Welcome to your life” — Tears for Fears.
“Life is a mystery” — Madonna.
“Freedom’s Just Another Word for Nothing Left to Lose.”
“I’m starting with the Man in the Mirror, I’m asking him to change his ways”
“Freed From Desire, mind and senses purified” - Gala
“Take my hands that I might reach you, hear my words that I might teach you, but my words, like silent raindrops, fell and echoed in the wells of silence.”
Jesus, I mean, there was a time when Bob Dylan was at the top of the charts with what was basically surrealist poetry.
The examples of people making profound pop music, or at least making pop music profound enough, are there. But while there were still some unwritten moral rules in the ’90s, such as artistic authenticity and “don’t sell out,” those were later completely corroded, and we have slowly slipped into an already dystopian landscape concerning the mainstream.
The mainstream is what will be shoved down our throats with force, and it is concerning.
So, to answer your question in short: yes, I believe it is very possible, and it would be powerful if somebody came along and did it believably and authentically. I’ll try in my way.
Is there an artist working today whose work you particularly admire? What is it about their approach that resonates with you?
I really love ML Buch for her modern sound and her incredibly specific references to the past that really hit me deeply. Her voice and guitar sounds have a Suzanne Vega quality that I love. But she also ventures out into very unknown and novel territory. I love her as an artist.
Very similarly, I have to mention Discovery Zone. I may be biased, but her abilities as an intellectual, sort of Laurie Anderson-type conceptual multimedia artist, mixed with her great songwriting and lyrical abilities, are phenomenal. The songs are just so good, and they’re always embedded in an incredible conceptual framework.
Also, my old friend World Brain is one of those little geniuses — musical, technical, always determined to make the best art possible.
I became friends with Devendra Banhart in LA, and he never ceases to inspire and amaze me. He’s such a true artist, really utterly living an artist’s life. He is happy when he can paint all day, make music, write poetry. And I really admire his joyful discipline and learn a lot from observing it up close.
The same goes for my friends Rachel Rocky Taylor and Sean Armstrong, who have a band called Slipper here in Berlin. They are always working on a new record in their little one-room apartment in Berlin Wedding and they care so much about capturing the right sound, the right take, the right feel. Absolutely true artists, not signed to any big label, just doing their thing — a humble and beautiful approach to art.
In a way, the total opposite of the mighty dragon of the all-powerful music industry, churning out poop after poop these days.
There are so many more to mention! Beautiful and talented friends alone would take up pages.
Thank you for this interview!