From electric blues to swampy, low-country rock & roll, Moji & the Midnight Sons create their own geography with What I Saw on the Way to Myself, a globetrotting debut album that brings together American vocalist Moji Abiola with Icelandic musicians Frosti Jón Runolfsson and Bjarni M Sigurðarson, Moji had recently quit her job as a Houston-based engineer when she met Frosti Jón Runolfsson in a whiskey bar in Reykjavík, Iceland. She'd already logged several years as a professional vocalist, fronting her own bands in Texas while singing harmonies for artists like Eddie Vedder and Glen Hansard on late-night TV shows. Frosti, too, was a musical vet, balancing his time as a drummer, film maker and DJ. What began with a conversation in a whiskey bar turned into an unexpected songwriting session later that night, when Moji found herself in Frosti's home studio in Reykjavík, improvising a melody over an instrumental track that Frosti and created with his neighbor. The band took shape that night, with Frosti's neighbor — guitarist and producer Bjarni — rounding out the trio. Brought together by a shared love of groove, grit, and guitars, Moji & the Midnight Sons mix their mutual interests — the riff-heavy rawness of Led Zeppelin, the punch of Bruce Springsteen, the dirty swagger of the Rolling Stones, the soul of Big Mama Thorton — into songs about leaving behind old lives and starting new ones. The band recorded What I Saw on the Way to Myself in a former outdoor shed in Iceland, with Bjarni co-producing the sessions alongside Hallur Ingólfsson. There were no isolation booths. No AutoTuning. Instead, the band focused on capturing an honest sound, turning culture clash into some of the hardest-hitting blues-rock on either side of the Atlantic. "Their music breathes of the rock ‘n roll from the United States’ deep south, the classic Brit rock that The Rolling Stones and The Who ushered in during the ’60s, and the blue-collar rock that Bruce Springsteen has made famous. They have, however, added a bluesy and soulful element a la Alabama Shakes and the tendency of Iceland bands to balance the material, immaterial, and natural." - Ben Yung, The Revue (Sept.15.16)