Nashville native Blake Barton creates music under the moniker Mischa Lively, and he is readying his Pillow EP for release on May 20th via RACECAR. Coming to production as a trained percussionist, rhythm is this musician’s instinctive language. Electronic music production, though, has meant checking some of the preconceived notions of that training at the door. Instead, he has adopted a minimal, highly nuanced approach built around expressively treated drum loops that expertly blur the lines between acoustic and electronic drum sounds. “Blakeup” situates slippery beat clusters in resonating space, masterfully conducting the myriad rhythms into a tangle of dubbed-out grooves. MKAV provides hypnotic visuals that mirror this track’s use of negative space. Sulfuric blocks and whorls of color seem to be triggered by the cut’s drum patterns and they flash and spin in ample amounts of black.
