With new album ‘Luna Mausoleum’ flying high and winning both fans and critics over 2026 looks set to be a massive year for Sky Valley Mistress. Gary Trueman chatted to Max and Kayley about the making of the record, their sound and future plans
You’ve come a long way since we first saw you play at Download festival. You’ve kept your core sound but expanded it too. Do you look to go in certain directions or is it just a case of where the music takes you?
(Max) It’s both really. We had a strong vision of where we wanted to go with this record, it’s just not always your choice of how you get there sometimes. It’s funny mentioning how we’ve come such a long way though because at the same time, it feels like we’ve only just started. The only difference is that this time we have the experience of knowing when to let go or wait for the music to pull you along for the ride.
Your album Luna Mausoleum has just been released. We love it. What has the reaction from fans and other critics been like?
(Max) Overwhelming. With our first record coming out the weekend lockdown started in the pandemic, our whole mission was to make sure that we shared this with as many people in the real world.
We did a pre-release listening party at the opening of our exhibition specifically for that reason and seeing everyone react in real time and feeling the excitement in the room for something we created was affirming. Then getting to meet so many old and new fans at the exhibition and finally being able to explain what we have been working on for so long was cathartic to say the least
The whole time we’ve been making this record it never stopped giving us this feeling like we were holding onto something a bit more special than just another album and the way people have responded has only strengthened that belief.
Did you alter anything from a writing perspective for the album compared to previous releases?
(Max) I think the main difference was that because I had to play every instrument, the whole process of putting the songs together changed. We were completely unaware of how much work that would involve too… Without a full band to jam and figure out parts that could be played in that moment together, we had to layer ideas and make ever mutating demos that would eventually form into what we could hear in our heads. That meant that me and Kayley spent as much time listening as we did playing the songs which I think hugely improved our writing process. It was labour intensive but it gave us the opportunity to refine and produce our music in a way that we hadn’t before. Weirdly where you’d think that would lead us to overthink everything and tweak things until they were ruined, it actually taught us the opposite and to be decisive, let the emotion of the song dictate our next move and not waste our time doing something we were only half into or not sure about. I think that comes across with this record. It knows exactly who it is and it comes straight from our core.
Your songs are rooted in what made rock music great when it was in its infancy making your sound retro, and yet you also have this cutting edge vibe too. Is this just the nature of music do you think, that it evolves but keeps its roots, or that it is cyclical, or both, or neither?
(Max) I think with rock music in particularl, there’s almost a duty to respect what has been before but also it’s in the nature of the music to get a grip of it and drag it to wherever you want to go. We know what music we enjoy playing and we know who our influences are. There’s something visceral and charging about electric guitars and loud fuckin’ drums to us that makes playing rock and roll more like a compulsion than a choice. We’re in an age where unless you’re on the fringes of what music is, everything has probably been done before. Our only goal is to do what we love and do it honestly.
Who wrote what within the band, for instance as Kayley sings the vocals are all the lyrics hers alone? Is the song writing and structure a joint effort?
(Max) It isn’t a Sky Valley Mistress song if either of us haven’t been involved in some way. With this album, a lot of the lyrics were initially mine but we would spend a lot of time working on completing them together. Most of the time Kayley would just sing whatever she felt along to whatever musical idea I had. Her ability to do this consistently off the cuff and in the moment has always amazed as much as it has inspired me. The opening lines of Thundertaker is the exact melody Kay sang the first ever time we played the song. It’s usually a mix of words and sounds and then I take the essence of her melody and write the lyrics to flow around it with whatever words Kayley has sung giving me the inspiration of what to write about.
Those vocals are pretty memorable too, really unique. They reminded our reviewer (me) of both Beth Gibbons from Portishead in places and also Grace Slick. So for Kayley, who are your vocal inspirations, who has shaped your vocal delivery?
(Kayley) I grew up singing with my sister playing on the PlayStation learning harmonies together. We were both into Linkin Park and she’d rap Mike’s parts and I’d take Chester’s lines. His dynamics and emotion always gave me goosebumps and made me unconsciously aware of how you’ve really got to believe what you’re singing for it to resonate with others. As I got older I got into Chris Cornell, Alison Mosshart, Josh Homme and Jack White among others. Some of them are better than others technically but they all mean every word they’re putting out and that’s what really matters.
When you were recording were you still making adjustments or was everything laid out ahead of entering the studio?
(Max) Because I was playing every instrument, we had to be prepared. We had colour coded tables with all the parts, click tracks that we had spent hours mapping out to match my natural tempo pushes and pulls with each song and lists with songs and sounds of what we were chasing for different parts. We had already demo’d the entire album before this to make sure we knew how to actually get through it all too and so that our producer Joe Fossard had a clear reference of what we were doing and how this record should sound.
The thing is though, nothing will ever be exactly how you imagined when you’re creating anything, that’s just not how it works. Sometimes you can have a really clear vision of how something is meant to be but when you come to doing it, you have to know if the intention and feeling is still in that idea and whether it’s working in the context of whatever you’re making. You’ve got to be open to things changing and be ready to make them exist. Whether that’s using different sounds, removing an idea completely or falling onto your pedalboard accidentally in the middle of a guitar solo and realising that was better than the one you practiced obsessively for that past few weeks, you have to let the art dictate the direction and for us, the more work we put in beforehand, the easier it is to let those moments happen and to know when they need to.
Will you be touring the album and/or playing any festivals this year and if so when and where?
(Max) Yes! Phase one of the Luna Mausoleum tour starts at the end of February with a few sporadic dates and then there’s a week-long run at the end of March officially. No festivals booked so far but we’ve worked on this thing for nearly 4 years so all we want to do is hit the road as much as we can.
Do you have any definite plans for Sky Valley Mistress moving forward into the end of the year and beyond? (more tours, fests, releases etc)
(Max) All we’ve ever wanted to do as a band is to tour Europe so I really hope this record can be our key to that. If we can pull that off by the end of the year, that will be a big one ticked off the bucket list. We’ve got a lot of other songs and ideas in the vaults but I’m not gonna make any calls of when they’ll see the light of day just yet.
Is there anywhere you’d particularly love to play or anyone you’d love to share a stage with?
(Max) Honestly, if there’s a room full of people that are ready to dance and have a good time with us, that’s all we care about. Obviously it would be great playing some huge stages alongside our heroes but the longer we’re in this game the more we want the purest form of what it is and that’s connecting with real people in real life. Nothing quite gives us that excitement and energy rock music does, so we’re just searching for every opportunity to share that feeling with as many people as we can. We know there’s a lot of fucked up things going on in the world and knowing that we can provide a place where people can escape and feel free from it all, even for just a moment is something we take seriously and that we’re honoured we’re in a position to do.
What would you like to say to people buying the album and coming to your shows?
Thank you. Aside from playing these songs live, the vinyl record package was our sole focus of how we wanted people to interact with this album. The art and music has all been designed to create something that you can fully immerse yourself in and seeing people want to do that in this world of distractions has been pretty unreal. Everything we do is with the intention of experiencing it in the physical world.
That’s also why we don’t play to a backing track or use samples or click tracks live. We want any barrier between the emotion we put into our music removed so that what we do is felt by the crowd as directly as possible and we’re so grateful people want to be a part of that.
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Interview by Gary Trueman