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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