Muki breaks down her new EP, 'Car Crash Through Your Heart: Part 1'

Eora/Sydney based songwriter Muki last week released her highly anticipated sophomore EP, 'Car Crash Through Your Heart: Part 1'. The concept based project introduces audiences to the 'Mukiverse', a visual and sonic virtual world that teleports the listener to a place full of personal chronicles, futuristic soundscapes and intimate songwriting. It's with this project that Muki solidifies herself as a holistic artist, moulding together a range of influences to create a sound that is truely hers.

Alongside the EP Muki has announced a headline show at the Oxford Art Factory Gallery bar on Thursday the 12th of August. She's also launched 'MukiKards' - a series of digital collectible NFTs available on Muki's own Serenade store. The first capsule sees Muki deliver a collection of four digital cards for each part of Car Crash Through Your Heart: Part 1, available to own and collect 'em all soon.

To get to know the EP even better, we are grabbed Muki to talk through each individual track on the EP, their creation, sentiment and everything in between.

Car Crash Through Your Heart: Part 1

This record was born out of a really hard time in my life and is the most raw and honest body of work I have released. It chronicles the feelings you go through after a relationship breaks down. The EP explores really complicated themes and as an artist I wanted to find the balance between being honest and authentic but also that sassy, fierce sound that has become a staple with my music. The EP was heavily inspired by the movie Blade Runner. I wanted to explore the use of analogue synths to create a sense of nostalgia but I still wanted to have that future pop sound. The title Car Crash Through Your Heart comes from the pre-chorus of my previous single I Know What I Like. I chose it because of the imagery. I feel that falling in and out of love can equally feel like a car crash through your heart. The visuals are an important element to this EP because it allowed me to tell more of my story. I write very visually, and most of the visuals were inspired by what I saw in my head when I wrote the songs. I call this space in my brain ‘the Mukiverse’. I also randomly had a psychic come up to me once and told me that I gave them Amy Winehouse vibes (which is very flattering) and after I told them that I was a songwriter, they told me that my visuals would be an important element to my music (I hadn’t told them that I was thinking about doing a short film to accompany my project). That night I went home and told my manager that we had to make CCTYH into a short film. 

Level Mind Fuck (LMF)

LMF explores a nuanced form of emotional abuse called coercive control and gaslighting, a type of abuse that I have personally experienced. This type of abuse often leaves the victim feeling very confused, and I wanted to replicate this in the song somehow. We did this by changing perspectives between the first verse, the chorus and the second verse, which makes it confusing. The idea came to me when I was in LA; I was in an elevator and was taking pictures for the ‘gram, and I captioned the photo ‘i push your buttons and take you to level mind fuck’. I wrote it down in my notes on my phone and six months later I wrote it with Sakr and George Nicholas. 

I Make Boys Cry

I start all my songs with the title (that’s just my process) and I came up with I Make Boys Cry when I was feeling a lot of sadness and guilt for breaking up with someone. As an artist I have often explored darker themes through twisting the messaging and sugar coating it with fun synths to make it sound sassy and fun. This song in its original format was essentially a ballad; but in this version it is explored in the context of a dance anthem (similar to Dancing On My Own - Robyn). The song starts off almost melancholic and visually walks you through someone breaking up with someone, and then gets to a dance heavy chorus that spins the melancholic theme on it’s head. Sakr produced this one, with additional production from Aaron Reyes (who produced It Won’t Hurt). 

Space/City Limit

When I came up with Space/City Limit it was a little homage to Nutbush City Limits and I knew I wanted the song to be a sad dance floor anthem. The theme of Space/City Limit is exploring that feeling you get after you break up with someone, that your social circle is too small and even (in this case) I felt the city was too small. When I wrote this song I was in London, I had left the city that I had felt broken in, and there was this genuine freeing feeling that you can feel in the song particularly in that chorus. It is very euphoric. It was important to me that this song was the third single, for me it feels like finally she is free. 

Moments Lost Like

I wrote Moments Lost Like in London with Sakr, it was actually really unplanned, we were sitting in the apartment I was staying in and I was in the feels. It was a rainy day and I had started writing the lyrics ‘every word feels like a weight, every thought that made it’s escape, every chorus you managed to claim, every tear that I lost in the rain’. At that point I knew that Tears In The Rain was going to be on the record, so I thought it would be cool to do an intro track. It took us two hours to write and record it and what we did on the day is what you hear. I didn’t want to mess with it at all, because I felt the vocals were super raw and honest. We were also right next to the tube station, so we recorded the train going past. The song has a little slice of London :) 

Tears In The Rain

I started Tears in the Rain with Basenji - we had organised a session and by chance it was the same week Rutger Hauer (Roy Batty in Blade Runner) had passed away. Seb and I were discussing our mutual love of Blade Runner, and I was saying how I was super inspired by the movie. We decided it was the perfect title for the song we were writing that day, as it was inspired by the final monologue of the film (delivered by Rutger Hauer). The song is about running into your ex (friend or partner) at a party and feeling like they are a stranger to you. All the tears that you cried over them, almost never exist because it fades away in time -- like tears in the rain. This song took a while for me to finish, it was initially meant to be a hypothetical situation but then that very situation happened to me, and the song took on a whole new level of honesty. It felt like the right song to end this EP with, it feels really reflective and final.

Image via Georgia Tulett and Jacob Laser

Words by PARRY TRITSINIOTIS

LISTEN TO NEW MUSIC HERE

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