Mike Mukti

'Bout time for some local stuff around here eh? Good thinkin. DJ Mukti handed me his full length, Lion's Share a few weeks ago. It's a full hour of great cerebral house/disco music with all sorts of samples fluttering and panning over each other. Many of the tracks don't follow the staple DJ-friendly electronic arrangement as they lack breakdowns or convenient phrases for mixing another track. Instead, they end up sounding like miniature mixes themselves, adding and dropping elements until the end of a five minute song sounds nothing like the beginning. Letting the songs turn into whatever "they're feeling" is fine, but it leaves them sounding like parts of a missing greater whole. So my only desire now is to hear this as one continuous mix, buuuuut I suppose that's why it's an album and not a mixtape.

Couldn't decide so I have to post three tracks here: Eh Yeah, Squeek, and Work It! The former starts out somewhere in 80s breakbeat electro land and quickly turns into a Ratatat-like club vocal track before the 80s beat comes back and slides under a slightly distorted Sigur Ros sample. (If that isn't Sigur Ros, then I'll wear my pants on my head tomorrow.) Squeek is a great synth track that DJ's will find easy to mix. Work It! I suppose is a Daft Punk remix; however, that doesn't do nearly enough justice to the instrumental. The familiar sample is almost a distraction from the strings and synth battling for lead in the song. The first half is some excellent disco house production and probably my favorite bit on the album. Unfortunately the strings find their way out around the two minute mark, but the rest of the track holds nicely.
The whole album plays like a great mix that just happens to have breaks between tracks. There's a lot to discover, so if you feel inclined toward anything below, you can stream the whole album on his virb site.

When Mukti's not making music, catch him drawing and printing t-shirts or meditating amidst a small clan of Buddha Machines. (These deserve a post in and of themselves, but for now, sample the magic here.)


Mukti - Eh Yeah (Download)


Mukti - Squeek (Download)


Mukti - Work It! (Download)