Welcome to ELECTRIC MOON •

Musician Brent A. Nuffer (aka ArthurAutumn)  began his career back in the early 2000s  performing in the award-winning band Studiotone, which rocked out regularly at the Hamilton St. Pub and throughout downstate venues in the Lansing & Detroit region.  After cutting his teeth for several years, back in 2007 he moved to Los Angeles and embarked upon a new journey with his musical project Arthur Autumn.  And now, 14-years later, Nuffer has launched his most adventurous venture to date:  ELECTRIC MOON: the world’s very first of its kind fully functioning Music & Art Venue using state of the art technology with 3D and Virtual Reality features.

According to Brent, in many ways this entire project and the journey spent developing it actually started when he was a teenager watch bands performing from the front window at the Hamilton St. Pub.  “I’m at a point in my life where I want to share all the gifts of music and give back by leading other people to the joys of music and art.  It’s like when you discover your new favorite band and want to share that with everybody - that sensation of hearing Nirvana or Jane’s Addiction for the first time. I want to share that sensation with others, especially kids.”

I’m deeply humbled an grateful to have the opportunity to bring Music & Art to others and to share the profound gift these interests have given to my life,” he explains. “We originally designed ELECTRIC MOON to be an actual bricks & mortar music school, art gallery, and performance venue and started looking for properties around the Los Angeles area. The goal was to develop a physical entity that apart from offering music lessons, a performance venue, and an art gallery, would also feature a record shop, and sell used instruments - that type of thing.”

“But then the Global Pandemic hit back in February of 2020 and I quickly realized we had to shift gears,” continues Brent. “I figured it’s probably best to stay put for now, but at the same time I was anxious to move forward. After processing all the fears, frustrations, and worries we were all going through, one morning I literally woke up from a dream that had handed me the idea of simply creating the ELECTRIC MOON as an online experience.”

“I grabbed my guitar and a cup of coffee and started asking friends about the concept and nobody had ever heard of a completely online music venue and art gallery featuring everything that we are focused upon showcasing and offering,  So that’s what we’ve done - we’ve created an entire music venue, including a listening room where we feature bands from all over the world along with a virtual art gallery.”

“Our main focus is about music lessons, workshops, collaborations, instrument sales, live stream performances and so much more., but we also feature an online virtual reality Art Gallery and a Listening Room where we will be featuring Artists, Bands and Songwriters from around the World. Now more than ever Artists and Musicians are looking for ways to express themselves, and there is an audience hungry to hear, see and feel it”

Brent says he started developing the concept for Electric Moon by sketching in his notebook.  “Basically, I designed  the whole place and each room and made phone calls and talked to people to see if this was even possible,” he explains. “I spoke with Mike Austin of XMLA - Los Angeles (xmla.com), the manager here at ELECTRIC MOON, and he told me to map everything out and start sending over designs, so I approached it room-by-room and it was a thrill to get into the architecture and design of assembling each room that populates ELECTRIC MOON.  Miguel Chavez the web developer and his team in Argentina played a very integral role in bringing everything together."

After launching the site two months ago, currently people can roam around each of the rooms, sample live music in the Listening Station, and walk through the virtual reality art gallery. They can also check out the workshops, collaborations, and live streaming performances. “People need to give each room a test drive to see how it works by poking around and trying things out. ELECTRIC MOON is all about exploration.”

A visit to the Lesson Rooms, for example, will allow students or guests an opportunity to interactively play with various instruments, similar to a video game.  You can play drums in the drum room, guitar in the guitar room, and piano in the keyboard room. the Listening Room they can catch live streaming performances that are filmed live, along with artist-to-artist interviews, with Brent interviewing different artists who then perform a song or two from the main stage.

Most of the revenue from ELECTRIC MOON at this juncture is derived from music lessons and workshops. “We have a crew of instructors available to teach guitar, bass, piano, and can do both virtual and in-person private instructions within the Los Angeles area,” explains Brent. “Our bread & butter is derived from music instruction and we are passionate about inspiring the next generation of musicians.”

“Our approach is different than the average music school because our mission is to not teach just the notes but what is in between the notes,” reflects Brent.

“For me I started out in Detroit and Saginaw and playing rock & roll and getting into a band taught me about life, because the lessons I learned through those experiences also apply to other areas in life, so what students learn here they can also apply in their everyday life, and our instructors are very conscious and focused upon that.  Right now we have eleven instructors on staff.”

As for the virtual art gallery and main performance stage, while Brent prefers abstract art they gallery also features varied genres that all people can enjoy; and artists featured in the performance room currently include a band from New Jersey in the Listening Room along with Michigan’s own Brett Mitchell. “We’re not limited by boundaries when it comes to the artists we feature and want to keep it diverse,” notes Brent.

“I find it important to deliver some sort of eclectic and personalized experience in whatever I do whether it on a stage or not,” he continues. “We wanted to bring something unique, something memorable, that we can build on and grow into the future with. Everything at the ELECTRIC MOON is set up as such. None of this was really easy, which is probably what fueled us to make it happen, the challenge, the process, the growing pains.”

“I’m an Artist first and foremost, that’s what I know most, and have worked at the most. Though getting into this World, a more businessman approach was a necessity. So climbing into that role is challenging. When creating Art or Music, I prefer things scattered, raw, and perfection is not a word I like. In business, it’s the opposite, neat and orderly, perfection is important. I’m kinda using different sides of my brain for each I guess, so still working at finding that balance.”

“Everything about ELECTRIC MOON is a constant work in progress,” concludes Brent. “We are always advancing new things and our podcasts are trying to implement different routes for live streaming where we can produce all the screens onsite and roam around and inter-connect them, but we have to wait for the technology to catch-up with where we are going with that.”

“Currently, I am very grateful for everyone involved in the ELECTRIC MOON, from some of the finest musicians around who have become our Instructors, to the artists, songwriters and bands we have the opportunity to meet, to the highly skilled producers like Mike Austin and web developers Miguel Chavez that have helped bring this vision to life. We realize we are only as good as the team around us.”

Given this exciting launch into the virtual world, how is the actual physical world and  state of the L.A. Music Scene right now; and how does Brent plan on engaging people around the world with the platforming that ELECTRIC MOON is busy establishing? 

“I think the L.A. music scene is coming back. The larger venues are opening up and while the venues I’m performing at are more particular with their focus on vaccination cards, we have been able to continue our residency at Hotel Cafe here in Los Angeles that is doing well.  Basically, we select a theme or an Iconic Artist such David Bowie, U2 or Motown for example and then we invite different songwriters to interpret songs from that Artist, which we call The Sunday Night Revue."

“When I first moved here it was everybody for themselves, which was funny to me growing up in Saginaw and Detroit where all the musicians supported and looked after one another,” concludes Brent.  “That was sorely lacking here, so with ELECTRIC MOON I’m trying to change all of that. We have 25 songwriters in our community that we interchange and it’s fun to have them onsite and collaborating with one another.”

“As far as building engagement, that’s the most challenging thing,” states Brent.

“When working with new technology there are certain things you can and cannot do, but we are excited about the capabilities we have developed, so the biggest challenge is raising awareness, especially nowadays when most people seem to have a 20-second focus span when it comes to gaining their attention.”

Check out the very 1st 3D & VR Music & Art Venue & sign up for Music Lessons today @ electricmoon.org 

To learn more, check out these links:

http://hello.electricmoon.org/a-glance-at-the-moon/

Website: electricmoon.org

Instagram: electricmoon.official

Twitter: ElectricMoon23

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/electricmoon.org

Other: Experience the ELECTRIC MOON today, the very first online 3D and VR Music and Art Venue! electricmoon.org