They say when you die you head toward a light. Toward bright white luminosity. Very possibly through a tunnel. And very possibly while hearing the sounds of Azure Ray's Maria Taylor and Orenda Fink. For 10 years, Azure Ray have been tapping into a hazy yet lucid form of music that could most definitely line and caress the passage into the afterlife. There is a composed calm and a weathered tranquility to their songs. Scenes and thoughts are slowed and distanced. Taylor sings, "Seven days below us/Keep me hovered above the ground." Hailing from Athens, Georgia, and Birmingham, Alabama, respectively, Taylor and Fink are Southern oracles, and, I think, not of this earth. Through the years, they've collaborated with Moby, Bright Eyes, and recently, Japancakes. After a seven-year hiatus, they've returned with a new album on Saddle Creek Records called Drawing Down the Moon, which continues their reflective levitating. You look back/down at your life, at your hands, your body, the lungs within—all too perfect of a machine.

How is it being on the road again? Any occurrences?

It's good! It's the road. We have a great crew. Heather McIntosh on cello/bass/keys, Browan Lollar on guitar/bass, James Huggins on drums and keys, and AJ Mogis as our sound engineer. We'll also have our friend Morgan Nagler [the Whispertown 2000] and Tim Fite opening up for us. Shreveport has been the highlight thus far. There was a casino, and prostitutes, and praying, and dancing, and a lot of tequila.

Seven years since your last album, how is the band different now?

Some things have changed, yes. You would hope that you would change a little in seven years. But we have really tried to focus on re-creating the special aspects of our music that come out of our pure collaboration.

What hasn't changed?

The amount of drinking?

Do you all drink energy drinks to stay awake on tour? With guarana? What do y'all think of guarana? What is the typical Azure Ray tour meal? Besides Big Macs.

We're more of a coffee/Diet Coke bunch. Orenda can't drink caffeine though, so she walks around all day in a state of semiconsciousness.

When you all are performing, how often do you have to fight the urge to breakdance?

We generally have more of a problem resisting the Running Man.

What do you think about when you perform? Do think about cascading waterfalls? Or moonlit beaches?

More like cascading waterfalls on the moon while we're lit.

I think you all have an amazing ability to make quiet music that's not quiet—softly sung songs that come across really clearly. How do you do this? And how do you do it live? Singing softer, but not too soft? Or maybe y'all don't ever think about this.

We like to sing really, really soft, so it's generally up to the sound person to boost the signal to make it audible. We rely a lot on sound engineers.

How does Drawing Down the Moon differ from your other albums?

We kind of feel like Drawing Down the Moon has qualities from each of our albums together on one record set to a modern context. We wanted to draw from that special magic that is Azure Ray but apply it to how we feel about our lives now. This was our main goal in the writing and recording process.

The first song on the album, "Wake Up, Sleepyhead," is especially transportive. How did it come together? What's the instrumentation? And are you all like angels or ghosts? I mean, are you even here right now?

Yes, Trent, we are here. Our idea for that one was for the music to be harp and theremin, so we had a harp player come and lay down the basic tracks. Her interpretation of the song was a little different from ours, and we realized it after she left. So we ended up having to memorize that timing of the song for the vocals. It was challenging with close harmonies, but we honed in and got it. If you listen closely, the count of the song is pretty strange. Then Maria tried to play the theremin for the first time when we were at Echo Mountain studios in Asheville, North Carolina, [which is the] home of Moog studios, so we had lots of fun Moog instruments at our disposal. Maria was having a hard time getting the right performance from the theremin, so she sang the theremin part instead, which gives it a nice, spooky '40s quality. The wind noise is from a Little Phatty Moog. Echo Mountain used to be an old church, so it has this really great natural reverb. That combined with a real Fairchild compressor that we ran most things through made it an ideal studio for us.

What are y'all listening to now?

Nik Freitas, Whispertown 2000, and Dead Fingers—our peeps!

Do you all stay in touch with Moby? Do you think you'll ever work with him again? Is he really that small and bald?

We haven't kept in touch with him. It's been a few years. Not sure if we'll work with him again, but we had a positive experience with him, so we'd certainly be up for it. Actually, in person he's really tall and has a lot of hair.

You all have had some Courtney Love run-ins. What0 is your favorite Courtney moment?

One time, she made all of our friends get up and move from a dinner table when they already had their food and drinks, so that her celebrity friends could sit down. That instantly endeared her to us.

Orenda, why do you have a tattoo of Haiti on your arm?

I feel like Haiti is my sister country. I've been there three times and am always drawn back. I had an old tattoo that I'd been wanting to cover up for years, so I had a map of Haiti tattooed over it. I had a sort of coming-of-age there spiritually and sociopolitically, so it will always be dear to me, and I don't want to ever forget the things I learned there. Viva Ayiti.

Orenda, what is your horror movie about? Please break it down for me. Is it bloody? Who's the killer? What's their neurosis? We've got Halloween coming up, and I need you to scare the ever-living shit out of me right now. Does the killer chop off their victims' fingers and eat them? Maybe the killer wraps the victims in bacon?

Hmmm, no bacon involved, but it sounds like you've got some good ideas there. My movie is called Deformity Hospital. If there's one thing I learned in L.A., [it's that] you can't give the plot of your movie away before it's in production (if any producers read this, call me!), but let's just say it's funny, gory, dark, twisted, and has a great soundtrack.