When Adrian Michna was 18 years old, he left his native New
York to study trombone in Miami. He had no idea that two very different
music scenes, and two very different cities, would end up shaping his
sound to a much greater extent than his academic experience.
Michna was drawn to the low-to-the-ground, ass-shakin’ booty bass
that was going on in the Deep South around the mid-to-late ’90s, but
there was also the emergence of IDM and an accompanying experimental
scene in Miami that had just as much of an impact on Michna’s music as
the dance-floor fare. Record labels like Miami-based Schematic were
way out there—releasing tracks composed of anything from
static, to silence, to punishing break beats—and Michna was there
to observe it all.
“The cool thing about Miami is there really was an experimental mind
frame. New York has a huge experimental scene, but Miami is more
focused. All you had to do for inspiration was think about your ring of
friends. Everyone was into the idea of really pushing it,” recalls
Michna.
His exposure to these unconventional sounds from Magic City is just
as evident on his first full-length album, Magic Monday, as his
NYC upbringing.
“I like New York for the griminess, the organic sounds,” he says. “I
like the gum stuck on the manhole cover. I worked on most of Magic
Monday in New York and I think you can hear that.”
The album—which came out on beloved electronic/indie record
label Ghostly International a few months ago—is a collection of
appealing songs tied together with seemingly incompatible features;
ambient field recording noise, massive erratic beats, and uneasy
trombone melodies.
There is uniqueness in Michna’s compositions—in addition to
the Ghostly deal, he’s come by production work for Diplo and Bonde do
Rolê—that comes from his use of dense layers and old
recording technology. About the source of his sounds, he says, “I love
sampling, whenever I travel, I have some sort of audio recorder.
Crosswalks or elevators can make a crazy ticking sound. There are
little tiny details everywhere, common things that are alien.”