Muke

Muke was formed when Madeline Liebowitz and Luke Kuzava (who had met in the dorms their freshman year at the University of Oregon) had nothing much to do one day and decided to try and record something on Maddie’s iBook. A few hours later, they ended up with the original version of “Dreamsicle”, and realized that their different musical influences and energies combined to make something far greater than the sum of its parts.When “Sirens”, their second effort, found its way to a friend of a friend of a friend who happened to play it on her radio show in Boston in fall of 2007, Maddie and Luke decided to take their exciting new sound as far as it could go: Balancing their full-time class schedules with writing, recording and mixing a full-length album was no easy task, but a mere seven months later, they finished “Shutterspeed Lullabies” - an album of strange, beautiful dreamscapes so vividly rendered you’d never guess that it was recorded almost entirely with the built-in microphone of an iBook (The vocals for eight of the ten songs were recorded using a better microphone).The next step was to figure out a working live show. This was a challenge, because they had taken such a maximalist, multi-layered approach to recording the album, and there were only two of them. After a lot of hard work, they stripped the songs down and figured out how to compensate for the lack of other band-members with lots of multi-tasking: Luke trained himself to beatbox while playing guitar, and Maddie balanced her vocal duties with an array of supporting instruments (flute, fife, melodica and keyboards, plus numerous random percussive instruments from knives and spatulas to wooden frogs). A good couple months of practicing later, and they had honed a unique and engaging live show that quickly gained local renown.As both Maddie and Luke still have a year of college left, touring plans are on hold. Until then, they are playing locally, writing new songs, and most importantly, they are excited to release their album out into the world and see what happens. They hope you enjoy it!