While What Is This? was working on their album, Alain Johannes met Natasha Shneider, and they immediately clicked musically. She joined What Is This? shortly thereafter. They then formed a duo called Walk the Moon – not the same band as the Cincinnati-based band Walk the Moon that formed in 2006 – and had other musical sounds besides rock on their album, Walk the Moon (1987). Jack Irons and Chris Hutchinson evidently played on several of the tracks, but on many, they used drum machines.
In an interview posted on ultimate-guitar.com, Alain Johannes discussed the album: "We [Alain Johannes and Natasha Shneider] became Walk the Moon and started to explore more of the songwriting stuff and different textures that are not usually rock band-based like synths and all that other stuff and I started playing my odd instruments. Well, some of them not odd but the pipa [Chinese lute] or sing like a Sufi-inspired Kowali singing and Natasha would do little choirs."
The two are better known for their work with Eleven, a hard rock trio that formed in 1990 when Jack Irons (drums) joined Alain Johannes (vocals, guitar, sitar, horns) and Natasha Shneider (vocals, keyboards, bass) of Walk the Moon; this band was also a partial reunion of What Is This?. Eleven have opened for major bands like Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Queens of the Stone Age, and Candlebox.
(April 2015/1)
