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Michna

By Dominic Umile

Published on October 22, 2008 at 9:50am

Michna's meticulously prepared latest album, Magic Monday, is a weave of erratic sampled snippets, live instruments, and programmed beats folded into one continuous track list. The Secret Frequency Crew member and active New York DJ (alias: Egg Foo Young) is hardly green when it comes to set organization, and Michna's downtempo, danceable, and ambient tracks all merge at a hypnotic rate on this project. For that reason alone, the outing should be swallowed whole — played straight through continuously. Snuck-in turntable trickery and backward-looping snares on "Levitation" should be taken only with "Raw Paw's" hyperactive breakbeat stutter, and those shouldn't be absorbed without the spaced fit of "Redline Flights." The latter's upbeat arrangement of abruptly vanishing synths and TR-808-styled snaps should offer partial consolation, even if Mondays still start off like they usually do.