Limelight: Rocket Moth

A charming love story interwoven with a band, Rocket Moth is so much more than just a new project on the scene.

Paul Craddick and Hannah Stobart met while they were both working with Steve Rothery, so right from the very beginning, this project has been steeped in prog history, and borne from a love of the music. In the time they’ve known each other, they’ve fallen in love, had a baby and produced this stunning debut album.

The project has taken much longer than they expected, but for completely understandable reasons. Paul laughs: “Well, we had planned on releasing this earlier but we had a baby and that kinda took some time away from the project!”

There’s no denying that taking their time over the record has worked out well for them. They describe their sound on their Facebook page as “alternative pop acoustic heavy stuff”, and a great range of sounds do indeed make up this unique piece of work, all set to Hannah’s Kate Bush-like vocals. Almost all of the album was recorded in a log cabin, and there’s certainly an earthy, spiritual quality to the record.

We wanted to steer clear of making a record of a specific genre.

Even though the start of this whole project was rooted in a prog world, Paul and Hannah never set out with the intention to make a strictly ‘prog’ record. Paul says: “We didn’t necessarily want to stick to a set style with this. We wanted people to be able to take their own views, their own opinions and their own thoughts to it, and let people interpret the music in their own way.

“We wouldn’t class ourselves as prog, although it’s certainly how people seem to be thinking of it!” he adds. “We wanted to steer clear of making a record of a specific genre, and I think we’ve managed to achieve that.”

Mesolow leaves so much room for interpretation: even on multiple listens to songs, different qualities come through each time and make themselves known, letting the listener into their world yet allowing them to take away something different from the music with each listen. It’s impossible to pigeonhole or define, as each song just reaches new areas of the musical spectrum.

So will we have to wait another few years for a new record? “Life does have a habit of causing delays!” laughs Paul. “Obviously our family life is hugely important to us, but we really want to get another record out there as soon as we can.”