Brian Lindgren has a vision of an alternate dimension, in which our adulthoood is controlled by a secret hand that keeps us economically asphyxiated and repressed. It's a reality called Planet High School and in it he is known as Mux Mool. Fully realized and crafted by a beat mentalist who's seen a new way, Planet High School is Mux Mool's graduation record. In coming to terms with stagnancy, Lindgren seems to have shed the dream for a more sensible outlook, which alots him the creative space to define his sound.
Mux Mool maintains his boom bap leanings throughout Planet High School, as the palate often slips into break-science vignettes, but his maturity comes in the samples beyond the 8-bit and synth nostalgia. On “The Butterfly Technique” he's letting the lower end of a piano burrough into the fold and then lifting it off its heavy feet with a merry-bells sample that elopes with G-Funk's intergalactic groove. Maybe it's just me, but the title Planet High School feels like after school detention in its arrested development namesake. Mux Mool's idea of Planet High School involves writing “F You” in the scantron sheet dots, cutting class and slurpees at 7-11. He manages to seek out a few pretty moments within the record, but Mux is always at his best when he's worked up a degenerate's theme of filthy bass and sloppy G-funk.
Mux Mool's Planet High School is out digitally on February 7 and physically March 6 via Ghostly International.
