photo by Anna Azarov
In well under three minutes, on their latest and maybe best time / mind bender, "so fresh", Los Angeles noise pop duo MUNNYCAT take you back and forward at the same time. The track informed by the pandemic and living in a state of the union that might of had the most strenuous restrictions on it's businesses and thus it's citizens is so exquisitely rendered, and yes, oh so fresh. From the very onset, MUNNYCAT infuses every cell in your body with a jolt of nostalgia and an undefinable sense of sonic joy / cool that hearkens back to East Coast proto hip hop and art pop circa early 80's. Within the sort of urban ambient retro opening that gives way to Khaled Tabbara's (aka Khaledzou) amazing guitar lick and Katianne Timko's (aka K808) vocal cajole you feel unburdened and free from the current wash of cookie cutter pop you hear too often. What follows is a dishy and delicious soundscape of sounds, smashed drumbeats that feel like they are 2 mic'd old style 60's style to rabid fire shotgun synth blasts and old school DJ rips. Listen multiple times and you feel the highly crafted production going on, sounds that only happen once or twice but build scintillating layers of sound. The musical break with the build up of distorted bass, shifting drum beats (and is that a harmonica jag in the background?) is utterly sublime. The retro sound that somehow has me thinking of iconic artists like Fab 5 Freddy, Salt-N-Pepa, Tom Tom Club and (tangentially) the Beastie Boys has me smiling so broadly that my face hurts.
MUNNYCAT share: "We pluck a lot of people's cards on this mixtape, but 'so fresh' ended up being a track where we called ourselves out. We'd have a ton of big plans for doing all these ambitious and amazing things during the 'down time' we had last year, but we severely underestimated how hard it'd be to accomplish them during the chaos of a global pandemic. We'd have a to-do list a mile long and then we'd be like, 'Wait a minute. Have either of us even showered in 5 days? When's the last time we ate a healthy meal?' We were playin' ourselves. But addressing that irony and producing a really fun, upbeat song helped us crawl out of that headspace, for sure."
MUNNYCAT continually blow me away, not only as songwriters but as producers. Their depth of sound on this and past projects is phenomenal. When you listen to their stuff you are not listening to the pop or indie tropes of the day but sounds steeped in some sort of far reaching library of tones and sonic ideas. Being able to grasp things out of the air in what might feel improvisational but is really a Zen kind of 'knowing' is the earmark of a good producer.
-Robb Donker Curtius
https://www.munnycat.com/
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https://twitter.com/munnycat
https://open.spotify.com/artist/3mib3ZXDjjjGpWxnoZu0XF?si=m12NqLSLS_-1tw35APB0JQ&nd=1
https://soundcloud.com/munnycat
MUNNYCAT is the LA-based indie noise pop band made up of producers K808 & Khaledzou. They’ve joined forces to blur the lines between dance, electropop and golden age hip hop. The result is confident, creative, and completely infectious. 2 total collaborators - they love each other, they live together, they write and produce together, they even shoot and edit their own music videos together. They’re passionately DIY and their music has been proudly licensed over 200 times. MUNNYCAT makes energetic and empowering neon-colored west-coast bops, with car-rattling kick drums and grimy percussive layers.
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