Two Star and The Dream Police is the debut album by musician Mk.Gee. This album explores slow jams and trippy sound textures that are becoming crystalized in my mental map of the songs. I love how this album sounds like night time, how it can navigate a massive range of depth.
I did not know who Mk.Gee was until about 5 months ago when I was exploring the website (https://everynoise.com/) and clicked because the name seemed cool. I looked up the artist name on streaming and found his most recent song “Are You Looking Up”. The artist name for the song actually said Mk.Gee & Two Star. I listened to some of Mk.Gee’s older singles and was not jazzed enough to save them; I figured I liked The Dream Police, not Mk.Gee. Later, I was listening to WDET, Detroit’s public radio, when a DJ played “Are You Looking Up” and announced the release of Mk.Gee’s album.
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a great place to start is Rylee & I > Candy > I Want. This three song run really encapsulates some of my favorite aspects of the album and offers the range of Deep Cut > Hit Single > Slow Cut. The top of the album is also a great place to start, it’s a 33 minute album.
Breakthespell is a standout track for me that I’ve surveyed to be the most disliked by fans, but this song really opens me up to a place and headspace that feels incredibly familiar and colorful.
a lot of the drums are quiet, and the rhythm of the guitars and keys take forefront giving the songs a super unique take. This project blends the trance of the rhythm (hip hop, hyper pop) and sweet harmonics (synth pop, psych rock) all pushed up against the sonic storage tank of loudness with sharp and screeching processing and attenuation (hardcore, dubstep).
Rating: Extra Sharp White Cheddar
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Ye old (and still dominating) studio environment is ideal for bands to come into a studio, play their song a few times, re record the vocals, over dub some ear candy and then clock out. Record a song in a day, or maybe a couple if its a weekend. Songs are not really able to be meticulously crafted, it would be a waste of time and money, and it doesn’t need all of that to sound good, the life-force behind the playing (and nice equipment) is what makes its sound awesome. There is a definite trade off between home/quirky and pro/balanced spaces.
Mk.Gee is a showcase of the bedroom recording. As a bedroom engineer myself, I have some insight; since their birth, songs are constantly being updated. Guitar parts are getting re recorded and over dubbed all the time. Vocals can easily be comprised of 6 different takes, you can snap all of the beats and the entire rhythm section together. Mk.gee does this wonderfully by using the often stiff feel of recording into grids to his advantage. I imagine Mk.Gee recording each part of the song as whole song and then sticking them together, but all the songs are recorded on different days. I gives the incredibly slow pace of the album shocks to the heart like getting a level deeper on the Fibonacci Sequence.
pig sounds 