10 songs to know MK - Part one

Plus Mura Masa, Ruthven, Broadcast and more

Picture by Alexandra Sans Massó from Francis Alÿs: Ricochets

There was a time, roughly 10 years ago, when half the songs in the UK’s pop chart sounded like the work of Marc “MK” Kinchen, after the Detroit producer’s remix of Storm Queen’s Look Right Through made its improbably way to the top of the British charts. So it would be wrong to say that MK is an unknown force, exactly.

Equally MK’s two innovations in dance music are generally pretty well known. Kinchen pioneered - although not, he says, invented - the cut-up vocal style that Todd Edwards notably took onwards to the world. (Edwards says he took his inspiration for his microsample sound from MK; Kinchen says Mike Dunn was the first to do it, with Dunn’s 1988 remix of Vicky Martin’s Not Gonna Do It perhaps the first example.)

MK was also, debatably, the first producer to use the Korg M1 organ sound that later became a staple in house, from Disclosure to Beyoncé. I say “debatably” because the credit for this is usually given to Swedish producer Stonebridge, on his remix of Robin S’s Show Me Love. But MK used the sound back in 1992, on his famed MK Dub of Doom of The Nightcrawlers’ Push the Feeling On and there is some debate about who hit upon the idea first.

Despite this, much MK’s career is little known. Did you know, for example, that he was a protege of Detroit techno god Kevin Saunderson? And that Kinchen released his first record, a techno-ish number, back in 1988? Perhaps so, perhaps not. In any case, with it seemed a good excuse to present 10 songs to better know one of the most important producers in house music.

1. Separate Minds - 1st Bass (1988)

Where better to start than at the beginning? Kinchen was an early starter in the world of electronics, playing around with synthesisers and drum machines from the age of 14 under the influence of Depeche Mode; he used to buy Keyboard magazine every month in his thirst for gear.

In 1988, at the tender age of 16, he hooked up with friends Terrence Parker and Lou Robinson (aka Trackmaster Lou) as Separate Minds, with the group releasing a 12 inch for Detroit’s Express Records the same year. Kinchen shares a writing credit with Robinson on Can You Feel The Difference? and has sole credit on EP highlight 1st Bass, a pitch-bending, drum-rolling, Wee Papa Girl Rappers-sampling early Detroit techno number that sounds a lot like the rough, ravey and soulful productions that Kevin Saunderson was putting out at the time. Saunderson himself heard the track, licensing it for a compilation (logically, if rather unimaginatively, called Techno-1) on his KMS label the following year, where it sat alongside songs from Juan Atkins, Chez Damier and more.

You probably wouldn’t identify 1st Bass as the work of MK if you didn’t know it and Kinchen wouldn’t hang around for long in the world of techno. (“I was doing music in Detroit and I stuck out like a sore thumb,” he told The Fader in 2015. “I was probably the least techno out of anybody there.”) But, at a squint, the cut up Wee Papa Girl Rappers sample has a hint of the producer’s later signature sound, while the pitch-bending riff has some of MK’s way with a tune. (It also reminds me a lot of the Bleep sound that Unique 3 were cooking up across the Atlantic at roughly the same time.)

2) MK - Somebody New (MK’s Club Mix) (1989)

Saunderson gave Kinchen access to his own studio, where the cutting-edge musical gear represented a significant step up from the machinery the young producer was accustomed to. Saunderson also put out MK’s debut solo record, the Somebody New 12 inch, on his KMS label in 1989.

The whole record is excellent. But it is the title track that, more than anything, gives an idea of where Kinchen is heading, with its sleek organ riff that nods (perhaps unconsciously) to the work of house music producers like Blaze, while the song features a catchy cut-up vocal that, while pretty basic by Kinchen’s later standards, certainly has its head towards the future. The synth string line - which is VERY Detroit - is also a fantastic example of Kinchen’s ear for a melody. Somebody New sits right at the cusp of house and techno, before Kinchen would definitively plump for the former.

3) MK - Burning (Vibe Mix) (1991)

Kinchen wasn’t quite done with techno, though. His second solo record, Decay, released on a 12 inch alongside The Journey by Never On Sunday (aka Octave One), was a grungey, ravey record that was apparently hammered by Fabio and Grooverider at their seminal club night Rage.

It is a fantastic song. But it was MK’s other 1991 release that would really blow up, taking Kinchen into the US club charts for the first time. Burning was the start of Kinchen’s highly fruitful collaboration with vocalist Alana Simon, who sings an exquisitely expressive tale of love and lust, the song’s melancholy air suggesting a love that was ultimately unfulfilled. (Surrender, the album that MK released with Alana in 1993, comes very highly recommended.)

Luckily, MK’s production  on Burning is up to the task. The song is perhaps most notable for its brilliant central riff, which sounds like rave being hammered out on a cheap vibraphone, but MK’s drums swing to perfection, a real step up from his previous work, while the bass line is perfectly calibrated to keep the song’s more expressive elements in order. Burning, the first release on MK’s own Area 10 label after no one else wanted to release the track, made number seven on the US Dance Club charts and is today seen as an early deep house classic.

Kinchen himself says that Burning is probably the track he is most proud of. “That was the first track that I really did by myself, without any other input,” he told Attack in 2013. “There was nobody saying, ‘Yo, Marc, you should do this. Maybe you should try this.’ I did the track in my room by myself with nobody in the room. I brought Alana in without an engineer, I recorded her. She sang some notes bad and I left them in the record because it gave it character and to me it sounded good. Twenty years later I can still play it for kids who weren’t even born when I made it. That’s the one I’m most proud of.”

4) Nightcrawlers - Push The Feeling On (MK Dub of Doom) (1992)

Burning set MK off on a ludicrous hot streak, which makes a mockery of my decision to sum up his career in just 10 songs. But this is the task I have set myself and so I must - ludicrously - fast forward through the classic Alana collaborations Always, a song that marked MK’s first US Dance Club number one and first UK top 75 hit, which Route 94 later remixed, making 12 in the British charts in 2014 as MK mania swept the UK.

As compensation we land on a song that could make a strong claim to be the most influential remix of the 1990s - MK’s 1992 remix of Push The Feeling On by unlamented Scottish dance / funk band Nightcrawlers (later re-christened the “Dub of Doom” for U.S. release). Have you heard the original? No you have not heard the original. 

And there’s a reason for that: MK’s remix is so staggeringly, vastly better it ate the original whole. It was MK’s remix that would become a dance-floor staple and which remains one today, some 22 years after release. And it was MK’s remix - recorded in 30 minutes after his first take on the song was rejected - that sent Push The Feeling On scurrying up the UK charts.

“I was desperate,” MK told The Fader. “I had done a mix, but the label turned it down. I’m like, ‘Shit, man.’ I plugged everything in; everything I did was a first take. I was in Detroit for like two weeks; I got back to New York [where he had recently moved] and I listened to it, and I was like, ‘Oh my God, this is amazing.’ It was like a different record.”

More importantly, it was MK’s remix that set the groundwork for a whole generation of house music by combining the classic Korg M1 sound with Kinchen’s cut-up vocal, by now perfected into a dynamic pop tool that created a whole new, ultra-addictive chorus for Push The Feeling On, which proved people will sing along to anything if the results are catchy enough. (I’ve seen whole clubs of very drunk people bellow along to this song, despite no one having a clue what the chorus is saying. “There are songs in different languages that people love but don’t understand; it doesn’t have to make sense,” Kinchen told Juno. “How many times do you hear a song in English, and you can’t understand what they’re saying anyway?”)

Push The Feeling On essentially set the template for Todd Edwards, Disclosure, UK Garage and a good 50% of UK chart hits in 2014, as well as showing Kinchen himself where his future lay. “MK's use of vocals became the cornerstone of my musical style,” Todd Edwards told Resident Advisor in 2011. “Though my sound continued to evolve, I can say with 100% certainty, without MK's influence, there would be no Todd Edwards.”

5) 4th Measure Men - 4 You (MK Remix) (1993)

I’m not entirely sure why this song was released by Kinchen as 4th Measure Men rather than under his own name, as it’s basically a continuation of his classic house sound, complete with clipped vocal sample, hook-laden keyboard riff, swinging drums and a honking midi sax riff that once heard is never forgotten. (I spent ages trying to work out where Kinchen had sampled it from. But I think the riff’s utter catchiness may simply have played a trick on my mind, disguising an original work as a sample.) The song is maybe slightly spacier than a standard MK production, particularly in its “MK Remix” form, which just earns the nod over the original. 

Interestingly, British DJ Ralph Lawson mentions in a post on his own website that the 4 You bass line could come from a dubstep record, which is something I had never though about before. Certainly, the song does pack an impressive. almost corporeal bottom end, which sounds wonderful on big club speakers, contrasting brilliantly with the saxophone honk. (Oh and the MK Dub of Given on the same 4th Measure Men record is an utterly wonderful record, with one of MK’s very best vocal cut ups, truly UKG avant la lettre. Omar S is a big fan, reissuing the song in 2011) on his FXHE label.)

And here ends part one. Check in next time for part two, the final five songs with which to know MK. And why not subscribe, if you don’t want to miss out?

PS Please let me know your favourite MK productions.

Some listening

Mura Masa - Shuf (Adore U)

Mura Masa comes to his third album still faintly high on the chart success of Boy’s a Liar Pt. 2 and - much like that excellent song - Curve 1 does an excellent job of filtering modish club styles like Jersey Club (Giddyup), footwork (Whenever I Want, a kind of footwork / jungle crossover), Brat-style electro house (We Are Making Out, with yeule) and deep house (Still) through a pop filter, making them accessible without ever being overly obvious. The best tracks, though, are the 2-step adjacent ones like Shuf (Adore U) and Rep 4 Me, where Mura Masa’s melodic sensibilities come to play. Shuf (Adore U), in particular, is summer BBQ garage of the highest order, with a seemingly random - but obviously not - open hi hat sound that pops up roughly twice over the whole song, to gift that extra soupçon of rhythmical spice.

Ruthven - I Can’t Go There

The (digital) cover of I Can’t Go There, taken from Ruthven’s coming debut album, features a picture of a wooden pipe, which reminds me of René Magritte’s celebrated 1929 picture The Treachery of Images. Is the London artist, perhaps, trying to suggest that I Can’t Go There isn’t really Maxwell / early D’Angelo-style R&B, however much the music might suggest so? I don’t know. But if he is, Ruthven might want to think a bit harder about releasing a song so gorgeously rolling, the moody string chords played out against a spectral shadow of backing vocals and ever so slightly wonky drum backing. Or not. In any case, it is a fantastic song and bodes very well for the coming album.

Broadcast - Come Back To Me (demo)

After the sumptuous banquet of unreleased songs that was Spell Blanket, the soon-to-be-released Distant Call is the After Eight Mint on the pillow of Broadcast’s career, comprised largely of demos of songs that will be well known to most Broadcast fans. It’s still utterly essential, of course, but the Grade A gems are the two new songs, Come Back To Me and Please Call To Book, which James Cargill only discovered after Trish Keenan’s death. Come Back To Me, in particular, is one of the greatest songs that Keenan ever put her voice to, a swirling, yearning piece of English folk music that you could imagine being hundreds of years old. You may well shed a tear.

The playlists

I have loads of playlists but these are the two biggest ones: The newest and the bestest, with all the best new music of the last three years; and the Newest and the Bestest 2024, which is a variation on the above that you can probably work out. If you like this newsletter you might like them.