RECORD TURNOVER 80s HITS #239
The Local Moon was an 80s darkwave group from East Berlin. Essentially the duo of René Le Doil and Ronald Lippok they only existed for a couple of years but had grown out of Lippok’s previous band Ornament & Verbrechen. That group had, in turn evolved out of East Berlin’s first ever punk band, called Rosa Extra, in which Lippok played drums.
Le Doil had sometimes appeared live with Ornament & Verbrechen but came rather from a background with in fashion and performance – which, like underground music, was feared by the local government.
In 1987 they put out their only album as The Local Moon, a selftitled cassette with 16 tracks. It was recorded in Le Doil’s apartment and only dubbed onto 50 tapes. It was followed in 1988 by a 7” recorded in a proper studio and distributed with the underground magazine Verwendung. It’s mainly notable for being the only independent vinyl release in the GDR that escaped censorship. The songs were adaptations of poems by US beatnik poet Bob Kaufmann, who was also featured in the zine.
In 2022 the Tapetopia series (focused on underground GDR music) released a double-LP reissue of The Local Moon with the EP as bonus tracks. Tapetopia was actually started to reissue the work of Ornament & Verbrechen and by the time this came out as its fifth entry, aufnahme + wiedergabe had taken the series under its wing.
