New chapter in Luana Moth saga

By: Tiago Resko Posted: 2:00 AM CDT Friday, Jun. 19, 2026

On a late-night walk in Gimli in 2016, musician Tony Mazza discovered a mysterious poem on the ground, penned on a loose sheet of paper.

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On a late-night walk in Gimli in 2016, musician Tony Mazza discovered a mysterious poem on the ground, penned on a loose sheet of paper.

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On a late-night walk in Gimli in 2016, musician Tony Mazza discovered a mysterious poem on the ground, penned on a loose sheet of paper.

Written on the back were two words that would become the centre of his obsession for the next decade: Luana Moth.

The poem eventually inspired him and his sister, Giovanna, to form a progressive electronic music duo of the same name, centred on the concept of a girl called Luana Moth who mysteriously vanished in Lake Winnipeg after a supernatural encounter.

MIKE DEAL / FREE PRESS
Tony Mazza and his sister, Giovanna, make up progressive electronic group Luana Moth. They’ll be debuting new music Saturday at the Park Theatre. — MIKE DEAL / FREE PRESS

Tony Mazza and his sister, Giovanna, make up progressive electronic group Luana Moth. They’ll be debuting new music Saturday at the Park Theatre.

Mazza initially started letting his imagination run wild with who Luana Moth could have been and started writing music around her story, but he was unable to find someone to work with on the project.

Mazza said while he and his sister — who is 12 years younger — both took an interest in the poem when he first found it, it was a number of years before she fully got involved with the music; he wasn’t aware of her talent when the project first started.

“I didn’t know she could sing until I saw her at a school play and she blew us away,” he says.

Even after witnessing her hidden talent, Mazza, 35, didn’t know if she would be interested in his project, but over the years she slowly became more involved and now plays a big role in the band’s lyrics, imagery and merchandise.

The band uses old camcorders and theatrical stage outfits to create dreamy, supernatural visuals heavily inspired by director David Lynch (Mulholland Drive, Twin Peaks). The stage props, social media posts and outfits all reflect a vintage feel, resembling old relics which carry a mysterious history.

He describes the band’s sound as a weird intersection between electronic dance music and progressive rock, with Mazza playing guitar and synths and Giovanna, 23, adding soaring vocals. Over time their songs have only become stranger, but at the same time will be easier for audiences to dance to, he says.

The siblings will debut new music Saturday at the Park Theatre for the first time since their self-titled album was released in 2022.

“I think it’ll be quite surprising,” Mazza says.

He and his sister spent endless hours working on the new material, and the songs will be tweaked throughout their eight shows over the summer to be perfected further.

“I feel like we did a lot of growing. It was a really fun and exciting feeling for the both of us,” Mazza says.

This time around, the songwriter pushed himself to write more intuitively, compared with the more pre-planned and calculated approach of the first album.

Mazza says he and Giovanna have always been close but never worked creatively together before Luana Moth; the project has forced them to put their minds together and consistently work in proximity with each other.

“It’s evolved our closeness,” he says.

Luana Moth officially found its footing after the first album, when the duo started booking more shows and decided they need to play as much as possible, he says.

After Saturday’s show, Luana Moth’s next performance will be at Sidestage, 700 Osborne St., on July 16 with Juno Award-winning Toronto band Kazdoura.

tiago.resko@freepress.mb.ca

Time to turn Lights back on

The last time indie quartet Federal Lights held an album release show, the band played the Good Will Social Club and sold tickets at Music Trader.

It was March 2016, so frontman Jean-Guy Roy would forgive you if you believed his band was just as defunct as those Winnipeg establishments.

After playing with nationally acclaimed acts such Great Lake Swimmers and Imaginary Cities, with considerable radio play under the band’s belt, Federal Lights’ decade-long absence from local stages might seem puzzling.

That’s Roy’s fault, he admits.

After touring sophomore record Coeur de Lion in 2016, the band returned to Winnipeg and Roy simply felt disconnected from the music and the industry, which felt like it had drained the joy out of his lifelong passion.

He’d decided that he’d failed.

Even in jam-packed rooms for European showcases, playing well in sets at South by Southwest, Roy found himself wondering whether anything would ever be enough, whether the spectre of failure would always haunt him under the brightest of lights; it got harder to see the love.

“I got to this point where I just could say, eff this. I’m done. In my mind and in my heart I packed it in,” says Roy, whose bandmates are Rob Mitchell, drummer Chris Gaudry and keyboardist Jodi Roy.

“To complete that process, I kind of needed to delete us.”

So Roy logged on to Facebook and YouTube and Instagram and erased the band’s digital footprint — every note of support, every photograph, every live recording. Gone in a few clicks.

It wasn’t gimmickry or hiatus, says Roy. It felt like time to give up.

“It was a decision, made alone, made by me, and I dressed it up as necessity. I told myself I was being practical. That I was being honest,” he writes.

“What I did to Federal Lights wasn’t a response to failure: it was a pre-emptive strike. If I ended it, it hadn’t failed me; I’d ended it. People do this with more than bands, and for the same reason: it’s a way of staying in control of the story, even as you’re destroying it.”

Now, a decade later, Federal Lights are powering back on.

In December, when the band was listed on a Times Change(d) bill with Ridley Bent and Leaf Rapids, the group had to announce its reanimation. “Federal Lights isn’t dead.”

Reborn and revitalized, the group released its third album, Celebration of Failure, on Thursday at Sidestage.

The group is also playing the Trout Forest Music Festival in Ear Falls, Ont. (Aug. 14 to 16), as part of a lineup that includes the Bros. Landreth, Union Duke and We’re Only Here for the Snacks.

“(My bandmates) pushed me back into this, and I’m very grateful, because we were able to make another record we’re really proud of,” says Roy. “It comes from a real place of honesty and struggle.”

— Ben Waldman

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