Tone Ranger Traverses Earth and Sky on Transcendent Double Single “Touchstone / Over the Moon”

With “Touchstone / Over the Moon,” multi-instrumentalist and sonic wanderer Tone Ranger (Alex Simon) offers a spellbinding two-track odyssey that moves like a ceremonial dance between the terrestrial and the celestial. Born of twilight hikes, forest floor improvisations, and star-drenched solitude, these tracks are more than just music—they’re vibrant, living ecosystems.

Opening with “Touchstone,” Simon invites us deep into the woods—literally. The track pulses with percussion sculpted from sticks and stones, while Melas Leukos’ featherlight vocals and Mimoha’s bamboo flutes evoke a quiet reverence for the natural world. Simon’s own voice enters not as an interruption, but as a soft invocation—a call to presence, to seeing the divine “in your eyes.” The piece breathes like the earth itself, rhythmic and alive, blurring the line between ritual and rave.

Then comes “Over the Moon,” written while Simon lived in a van perched at the edge of Canyonlands—a detail that somehow explains the track’s blend of whimsy and grandeur. It’s a cosmic lullaby turned dance track, where playful synth arpeggios, sighing violins, and grounding acoustic guitars orbit the looped chant: “Rabbit jumps over the moon.” Evelyn Drach and Gracey Crane lend their voices to this celestial round, transforming a children’s rhyme into a transcendent mantra. It’s joyous, surreal, and somehow grounding all at once—like stargazing with your feet still firmly planted in the dirt.

Taken together, “Touchstone / Over the Moon” feels like a microcosm of Tone Ranger’s larger project: a celebration of wonder in all its forms, rooted in the liminal space between tradition and technology, land and sky. These aren’t just songs—they’re portals. And as a preview of his forthcoming album Confluence (out August 8), they suggest Simon is poised to take his genre-defying desert electronica to thrilling new terrain.

Tone Ranger isn’t just making music. He’s building worlds—and inviting us to dance in them.