Lausanne’s Olivier Cornu has been on a steady roll under the Moon Construction Kit name since his 2022 self-titled EP. I covered “Chemicals” back in December, which was his most visceral release up to that point – a power-goth-pop track that nailed the feeling of emotional overload. “Snake Charmer” came out on March 6th and is his first new music since then. The concept is a fairground at night: beautiful but a little haunting. Crystalline piano and Mellotron to get that lush 60s psych-pop atmosphere, with lyrics that are, by his own description, quite clinical underneath all of it. The subject is addiction, or more specifically, that moment when you realize the cure has become the problem.
Compared to “Chemicals,” this one sits a little quieter in its approach, but the Moon Construction Kit fingerprints are all over it. The layered production, the vintage warmth, the way Cornu builds atmosphere from the inside out – it’s all present. The Elliott Smith and Father John Misty references make sense here more than they did on the previous single. The song earns its fairground-at-night description, and the Big Pharma mantra that closes it out lands with the unsettling feeling he was clearly going for.
One-man projects live and die by how intentional every decision sounds, and Cornu’s are. “Snake Charmer” is another solid entry in what’s quietly becoming an interesting catalog.
