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Austin Underground

Are You Looking Up? Mk.gee Live in Austin

By Vijay Davis


In a year of big sounds and the stratospheric rise of a number of underground artists into the mainstream, the success of Mk.gee has been somewhat understated in comparison, a hidden gem emerging from the woozy sounds of his distorted, eerie music. On TikTok, he’s amassed something of a cult following; or maybe that’s just how I’ve trained my algorithm. There’s something about the music, the presence behind

Mk.gee that is unlike almost anything else I’ve heard in a very long time. I’ve seen

comparisons to Prince and Hendrix in terms of the raw emotion and innovation he

brings to the guitar, and after seeing him live in Austin last month, I really believe he’s

something of a living legend on the rise.


Before the arrival of Mk.gee, there was Michael Todd Gordon, a New Jersey native and guitar fanatic. In old footage of his days playing in clubs, there are elements of the star he would become, but it wasn’t until Gordon started producing his own demo tracks that the magic really began. After a stint at USC Thornton’s School of Music, Gordon dropped the first EP under the name Mk.gee, helpfully titled Pronounced Mk.gee, a bouncy, bright collection of songs that bob and weave around Gordon’s own voice.


There’s an undeniable element of strangeness on songs like You— which brought him

attention after being playlisted by Frank Ocean— and his unconventionality only grows

stronger on subsequent releases. On 2018’s Drown and 2020’s Museum of

Contradictions, Mk.gee continued to carve out and refine a sound of his own: a sparse

soundscape of flat synths and pulsing baselines driven forward by Gordon’s exquisite

guitar tone, a heavily distorted and raw sound that has been the subject of many

attempts at recreation in recent months.


I myself first became aware of Mk.gee through the live album video of Dijon’s 2021 LP

Absolutely. The two have been close collaborators for years, and their sounds and playing styles complement each other, both raw and controlled in equal measure. The

video is fantastic, and well worth watching. The group of musicians build so effortlessly

on one another’s energy, leading up to crashing crescendos in songs like Scratching

that last only a few seconds before beginning anew, punctuated by banter and joking

riffs. It’s the relationship between Dijon and Mk.gee throughout the video, however, that

is the real highlight. The two artists speak the same language of raw emotion in their

music, and it’s clear to see how closely they’ve influenced one another.



After Dijon posted about his former guitarist’s new album on social media this February,

it took me a few days to understand what I was listening to. But eight months on, Two

Star and the Dream Police has become my most-replayed album of the year, by far. At

only 33 minutes, Two Star is a breeze to get through, but the album’s production is so

densely layered that every new listen brings something new. Although this is the fourth

release under the name, Gordon considers this album his debut, and I would agree:

here, Mk.gee has arrived.


Like his previous releases, Two Star has a certain mysteriousness to it, with Gordon

inhabiting a Ziggy Stardust-esque role as he’s caught in a sonic fog between lovers.

The songs themselves are entrancing: in Little Bit More, the guitar is woozy and

pleading; and in New Low, like a rusty nail is screeching through your headphones. It

takes a few listens to grow used to just what Mk.gee is attempting here, but if and when

it clicks, it’s hard to want anything else. The dark atmosphere of the album brought

Mk.gee comparisons to 80’s synth pop through Phil Collins and Paul Simon, but there’s

more than just his inspirations on Two Star.


My favorite track off the album, Are You Looking Up, demonstrates just what I love

about Mk.gee and his sound. On first listen— and I couldn’t count the number of people

I’ve played this song to while trying to share its magic— something grabs you

immediately. Maybe it’s the way the guitar twangs and the distorted drums pulse in the

background, the way Gordon’s desperate voice sounds almost clipped in its intensity.

The film clip of this song really illustrates this point— an utterly simple shot of Gordon

playing his guitar live while hanging out of a moving boxcar, carefully composed to have

the singer framed in 4:3 by the train’s doors with only his fretboard breaking the

illusion— it’s clear that this is an artist with a specific vision and method.



After the release of Two Star and the Dream Police, Mk.gee quietly shot up in popularity,

from unlikely sources. Whether it was Dijon’s social media, enamoured guitar fans on

YouTube, an odd endorsement from Eric Clapton, or streaming playlists, this album felt

like a closely-guarded open secret, a musical litmus test as the ‘next big thing.’


A brief run of shows in the spring brought videos of Mk.gee surrounded by smoke

onstage, lit from behind by two beacon-like fog lights that shone out into the audience. It

looked so different from the usual stage setup, and fittingly so for this artist. When he

came around to play Emo’s in Austin last month, I knew I had to experience it for

myself. The energy was electric in the venue, a few thousand people anxious to see

whether the long-haired guitarist that had seemed to appear out of nowhere was as

good as they’d been hearing. The show opened with a DJ set by SEES00000, which

was both wildly energetic and oddly jarring, as he worked up his vocal sample-heavy

tracks to the beat drop and quickly pivoted away to another track in a sort of whiplash.

The crowd loved him, and so did I.


When Mk.gee himself came out, flanked by second guitarist Zack Sekoff and Andrew

Aged on a combination sampler/sequencer, the stage began to take on a whole different

atmosphere. Fog filled the space between the artists and spilled over into the audience

as the wandering intro to Dream Police played gently, before Mk.gee stepped forward to

strum the first chords of the song; a harsh, resonant statement that sent rippling

vibrations through my chest. The album, played almost in its entirety during the set,

sounded so much less restrained than the studio versions. Everything— from the drums

to the live vocals and that iconic guitar— was raw, emotional, and just breathtaking. It

wasn’t just me who thought so, either. In that first song and guitar solo, I heard a

number of people around me exclaim with some mixture of surprise and joy— “Oh my

god!”


On reflection, it was probably the best live show I’ve ever seen. I’ve watched a number

of concert clips online in the weeks since and find myself jumping to relive any glimpse

of that concert’s magic that I can find. It seems Mk.gee has only been getting better and

more comfortable onstage with each show he plays, from the eagle-like screeches that

escape from him after hitting a particularly resonant riff, to the excessive number of

times he replays a song (on his final date in Minneapolis, he played DNM on repeat for

more than half an hour, eventually letting the crowd mosh while he went to get more

beer).


It’s a concert that has to be heard to be believed. With all his future prospects— teasing

an upcoming Police-inspired song, producing Bieber’s new music, more and more

interviews with larger outlets— I think Mk.gee is a future star in a big way, the kind of

artist you’ll be telling your kids about having seen at the beginning of their career one

day.

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