Whether you think he’s the future of music or sounds like Phil Collins played through a lo-fi plugin, you’ll likely be hearing a lot about Mk.gee in the coming months and years.
His debut album, Two Star & the Dream Police, was released in February to rave reviews - certainly not two-star ones - and no lesser authority than Eric Clapton has feted him. “He has found things to do on the guitar that are like nobody else,” reckons ol’ slowhand.
Mk.gee - AKA Michael Gordon - rarely gives interviews, but in a recent chat with Dazed he discussed his unusual sound and expressed a reluctance to be held up as a modern day ‘guitar hero’.
Many of the songs on Two Star & the Dream Police sound like they’ve been written and recorded ‘properly’ and then wilfully bent out of shape, and Mk.gee attributes his attraction to imperfection to growing up in the age of file sharing. He may have been exposed to a lot of music, but he was listening to those songs as low-quality MP3s.
“That’s probably why I like underwater-sounding things. Because I grew up on 12-bit music,” he suggests.
As a result, perhaps, Mk.gee has no desire to create the ultimate, ‘pristine’ recording setup.
“I like taking cheap, bad gear and trying to make the best song with it, because it forces you to say something interesting and to compensate for poor quality,” he says.
And, while the internet is full of people trying to work out Mk.gee’s unique guitar playing technique and sound, it’s not something that he seems keen to make his calling card.
“Categorising me as a good guitar player?” he asks. “I mean, I am a good guitar player; I like to find new cadences and interesting arrangements, and contextualising different stuff on a guitar with weird production choices. But I don’t really relate to the guitar any more. I don’t like its nature... Honestly, guitar is, like, the least interesting thing about the record to me.”
Mk.gee does go on to admit that his playing and style are actually interesting - he appears not to be immune to making contradictory statements, almost in the same breath - and you start to get a better understanding of how his technique ended up being what it is when you learn that he was taught by an upright bass player.
“I think it was helpful to do it that way,” he says. “I never liked the idea of getting lessons from a guitar player, and thought it would be more useful to learn from someone who didn’t play the guitar at all - someone who could give musical lessons that were more exploratory, more about trying things out.”
We also learn that Mk.gee’s musical hero is Prince - this will come as no great surprise to those who’ve heard his music - but, again, one of the reasons for his adoration is slightly unusual: the Purple One’s legendary lack of quality control.
“For him, it was always about the sentence, not just the individual songs, and being down to go all the way and try things out,” says Mk.gee. “He did make, on some of the best records ever, really bad songs.”
Mk.gee is currently touring the world. Date and ticket details can be found on his website.
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