Michna - Thousand Thursday (2015)

Are we all tired of the "[Artist] Returns After [Number] Years in Obscurity" headline yet? Because Michna sure is. Nearly seven years following the NYC DJ/producer's debut album for Ghostly, Magic Monday, he's finished the official follow up to that record, but Adrian Yin Michna doesn't want to overstate what happened in the interim. "Life just moves," he starts casually, "there's been a lot going on." DJ gigs, music production for video games and commercials, and film scoring have kept him busy, along with a healthy balance of painting, biking, and other non-musical endeavors. In light of Michna's sophomore LP, Thousand Thursday, though, it all seems beside the point. Simply put, his latest record is a celebration of the producer's love for vibrant electronic music, bothering very little with conceptual or contextual baggage. And yet, in many ways, Thousand Thursday effortlessly streamlines Michna's life and cultural background into affable dancefloor sounds. "My dad is from Ealing in West London," he shares, "and that's been a huge direct musical influence my whole life, especially when I was a teen and spent some time in London in the mid-'90s." You can easily hear that much in the ravey breakbeats and horn stabs that sneak into synthy tracks like "Cherry 2000" and "Time Will Tell", or even the vibe of rain-soaked streets that permeates Thousand Thursday. Then there's the artist's enduring love for classic house, disco, and hip-hop, which is more obvious. "Nuroq Legacy" effortlessly brings all of these influences into one lively, eclectic dance track, but the wistful "Increasing Ambition" is pure neon Italo and Michna's unclassifiable brand of of hip-hop has never sounded better than on "She Exists In My Mind". Perhaps less apparent is how the industrial tapes from Michna's childhood played a role in creating these 10 spirited tracks. "I started re-listening to them primarily just to hear how they flip samples," he elaborates, and the technique is used all over Thousand Thursday. It lends the music an added bit of personal history and what Michna calls "subliminal messages," as he borrows from years and years worth of field recordings—including bits of "Blackberry video, Flip camera tour footage, terrible interviews with friends, people on the street, and found sounds galore." Rifle through the slow-grooving robo-beats on "Believe In It Pt. II", or "Jace the Mind Sculptor"'s densely textural ambient drift, and you'll uncover layer upon chopped up layer of these lovingly curated snippets. There seems to be a tapestry of life's strange, beautiful, and unexpected moments woven into Thousand Thursday. For all of its varying influences and reference points, Thousand Thursday is actually a strong cohesive listen; each of Michna's productions flow seamlessly into the next. This is an album where NYC/LA dance-pop vocalist MNDR can deliver her chilly falsetto next to a lifelong gearhead twiddling the knobs of his Akai S950, Korg MS20, Emu SP1200, and other coveted hardware. Thousand Thursday is the sound of Michna re-discovering his passion for writing tunes and crafting an album, and whether he likes it or not, it all tells us a bit about where his mind has been during the years of his process.