About

Hi, I'm Michelle Zheng, and Lunar Noon is the project that has come out of the last year and a half of my music-making. My main musical influences include Susanne Sundfør, Sufjan Stevens, Claude Debussy, SZA, Imogen Heap, Hiatus Kaiyote, Sigur Rós, a long history of choral singing, and a lifetime of obsessing over film, anime, and video game soundtracks. I'm from Santa Cruz, CA but am currently based in San Francisco.

“Symbolic Creature" is my debut album, and comes out on February 18th, 2022. Circling a theme of superstition and good luck charms, the songs are about everything from ancient trees to family cake recipes to the new Californian fire season. As with many first projects, it's made of so much; all I had to give at the time, I gave to it.

The title of the album is a nod to the fact that the meaning we find in so many objects and omens comes from associations we assign to them in ultimately arbitrary ways. But we can at once recognize that arbitrariness and still let them make our lives appear less chaotic and more meaningful. My life is a mosaic of all of these colorful symbols coexisting together – they let me tell a story about where I’ve been and where I think I’m going.

The thirteen songs on the album were written, recorded, and produced between February 2020 and the summer of 2021, between San Francisco and Santa Cruz, from my bedroom and remotely from the homes and studios of nearly a dozen collaborators during the pandemic. These people were supportive friends, teachers at the San Francisco Community Music Center, and musicians I met online and hit it off with who really helped me feel like my project was worth seeing through. At times it was joyous – when waking up to find new parts sent back by my co-conspirators in different time zones – and other times very isolating – when mixing late into yet another night alone in my room. I consistently had this vision of myself standing on the edge of a cliff somewhere, floating in the middle of space, looking out at stars against a pitch-black sky. I felt distant from the rest of my life, but also like I was in some weird, beautiful corner of the universe that no one else had ever seen.