I have to say I'm loving this guy's music right now. His creativity in forming sweet tunes and beats and vocal stuff has overcome my natural reaction against music with techno/house sounds. Ice Cream (audible on jjj) is one you may have heard. It's semi-restrained, dance-imperative, deliberate electronic music with a penchant for the word officially spelt as wooo but with the variations of whoa, woot, wooh, and if you're getting really picky, woo.
Muscles (real name top secret), a country boy in Melbourne, has gone from unknown to the global poster child of hyphenated post-modern electro-dance music, within a year. In Mess + Noise around July or August last year there was a feature on this unknown aspirational kid, probably around my age, who the writer thought was a bit eccentric and whose world-domination ambitions were not thought to be likely to succeed, even though he was trying really hard. I mentioned him on splodge in August, and ended up being just the fourth little review excerpt he stuck in his review column on his website. Fluxblog, one of the internet's mp3 blog barons, beat me by a month. But less than a year later Muscles has 5000 imaginary Myspace friends, in November he passed 10000 page views, and to date there have been around 80000 plays of his few songs that he's got up there. Triple J is head over heels for him and he's gone off to America to tour for a little while with Soulwax and 2manyDJs who I think both have something to do with dance music. Those sort of people.
How did he do this? In the M+N article his aspiration was to be a superstar, something like that. That he'd work at it even if it took decades. This guy is hardcore. He used to offer to send a promo CD of his songs to anyone who asked. Right now he asks for anyone to send him 'cds and stuff if you're in a band or a dj who makes mixes, im always looking for new music and bands to play with!' This is one enthusiastic guy. Persistent too.
But how long will it be before he is over-lauded on Pitchfork as the messiah from Melbourne, and how long after that that they surgically cut him down to size, and how long after that that the British poparazzi fawn and drool over him and his relationship prospects, and how long after that that he becomes a coked up vegetable propping up southern California's rehab industry? Huh? Hopefully the plot won't unfold like this. This is a guy who sings about the simple pleasures in life- badges, lemonade, finding common ground with an acquaintance through shared musical tastes, ice cream, and riding on the train. Not only that, he seems cluey, with some nous and good judgment. He refuses to accept people as Myspace friends if they "have an annoying background that takes ages to load, transparent objects on your myspace, or 'special' characters in your name, you will not recieve a 'wooo' therefore not worthy of befriending muscles." I respect that. And so should you.
Muscles Website
Muscles Myspace
Mess + Noise article
