Mukqs Walkthrough

Mukqs has released solo experiments that take his tactics of tape-loop mangling and sample manipulation honed in the trio Good Willsmith to new heights of noise collage abstraction. Walkthrough, Max Allison’s first full length release on Hausu Mountain represents another complementary branch of his work: layered synth compositions performed on hardware electronics, inspired by the tones of classic video game music. Recorded live as a single session presented without overdubs, Walkthrough finds Allison winding through a song cycle of day-glo square-wave leads, busy electronic percussion patterns, and washes of low-end drone. Mukqs meshes the emotionally resonant melodies and synthetic timbres of the soundtracks to Super Nintendo RPGs like Chrono Trigger or Earthbound with the strain of organic synth exploration practiced by the likes of Cluster or Emeralds. For Mukqs and many musicians of his generation, video game soundtracks served as a formative entry point to electronic music at a young age. Instead of merely bridging the gap between Mukqs’s musical upbringing and his current experimental practice, Walkthrough reveals that no such gap exists.