Brian Lindgren lends himself to "via"s pretty well. His homebase is Brooklyn-via-Minneapolis, his label affiliation is Ghostly-via-Moodgadget, and his music is hip-hop-via-electro-- or maybe vice-versa; you know how lines get blurred these days. Lindgren's career as synthesizer-fidgeting beatmaker Mux Mool has been defined more by sounds than styles-- one of those widescreen genre-absorbing approaches that's made "bass music" the vague but fitting descriptor of choice for instrumental post-hip-hop. And in keeping with the approach of a generation that finds electronic sounds to be not only natural but familiar, he tends to bring out the loose, humanistic side of waveforms and electronic keyboards in all their idiosyncrasies.
That's probably one of the more cohesive ways to pin down the personality of Skulltaste, an album that's a hell of a lot harder to define in terms of scenes or categories. Floating through Boards of Canada wooziness one moment, churning out Tobacco-esque bass filth the next, Mux Mool has put together an album whose sonic multiple-personality disorder could be aggravating if it wasn't so consistently engaging. And for all his weirdo fronting-- eccentric song titles, a Tron-gone-metal visual aesthetic, sparsely doled-out party clichés and braggadocio as the only prominent lyrical content-- his work transcends its mild jokiness to reveal the adventurousness of a musical scholar.
Every scholar needs a starting point, and Mux Mool's seems to be the watershed period where chart-rap juggernauts, Native Tongues heirs, and independent-as-fuck iconoclasts were all pushing the boundaries of what they could do with synthesizers. So you could call this stuff hip-hop if you felt like it-- there's a heavy pulse of clap-beats, intricate snares, and rave bass that split the difference between Fantastic, Vol. 2's warmth and the blown-out dirtiness of The Cold Vein. But that's just the support structure, and it bolsters everything from lurching boom-bap ("Breakfast Enthusiast") and euphoric Dirty South bounce ("Ballad of Gloria Featherbottom") to the blissed-out "Morning Strut", which features a choppy, mournful piano straight out of the 9th Wonder playbook.
And while Skulltaste falls under hip-hop jurisdiction if you go by Bambaataa rules, it definitely stretches way the hell out, branching into ambient downtempo, glossy disco, and neon electro. No complaints here, quality-wise-- "Enceladus" is perfect circa-1999 French-style house, and the manic shudder of "Crackers" is the kind of hyperspeed pop-and-lock fodder that leaves lesser 80s-evoking club jams in the dust. A fluid stylistic identity isn't the worst thing to have, and when he dials down the tempo and delivers something like the warped-tape "SFW Porn" or the lowrider-hovercar anthem "Dandelion", dude straight up steals your favorite chillwave band's lunch money. It's definitely exciting to hear an artist who can excel in so many different corners of beat music, but it'll really pay off once Mux Mool finishes carving out a corner of his own.
