“While listening to this, and contemplating the automobile artwork, you sit with ears and senses open, waiting for some guitar hook or divine melody to capture you and force you to hit repeat. It doesn’t come. See, it sounds like a pop release, but that’s the trick! Once you realise this you can begin appreciating Unknown Knowns for the interweaving guitars and all the space used by the drawn out arrangements as the mini-album/extended EP sublimely unfolds.”

Drum Media

Excerpt: “Being spread across three different states isn’t the most productive way to keep the band going. We always had in the back of our mind that we’d release those tracks that we’d recorded. But with Dan and I living away it was too hard to get into a position where we could finish it off and release it… Now we’re only dealing with two states in Australia instead of three, so it’s easy for us to fly Dan back for a show… It was actually quite nice revisiting the tracks that long after it. A lot of things came a long way in the mixing. We did a bit more production and got a bit more creative with how we approached them… No additional recording was done to finish the songs. Everything you hear on Unknown Knowns was recorded in 2004 and mixed in late 2009. The main thing that changed in the mixing of the record was that we took a lot out. We were one of those bands where everyone was playing all the time, and part of coming back and revisiting the record was, ‘Do we really need that part going for the whole song? Is it better pulling out some of those those bits, creating a bit more space?’”

Mess & Noise

Excerpt: “Unknown Knowns seems blissfully unaware of the anticipation that surrounds it; Mukaizake sound like a band that don’t feel they have anything to prove, whose humble goal is nothing more than to write and record the best possible songs they can, expectations be damned. Unknown Knowns more than lives up to the promise of its predecessor. These six songs are everything the band’s patient fans could have asked for, as well as being strong enough to introduce Mukaizake to a whole new audience.”

Mess and Noise

Excerpt: “The best indie rock sounded experimental and exciting while still being accessible and interesting. Perth band Mukaizake nail this winning formula on their sophomore EP, Unknown Knowns….As with many indie bands, the lyrics are deliberately obscure and ambiguous. The meaning of the songs is conveyed in the way Symons sings them and the snippets you can make out. Put on paper, the lyrics probably wouldn’t be too impressive, but they work in the songs. More impressive is the tension in all of the tracks between melody and dissonance. Melody always wins, but Mukaizake does an excellent job of adding jagged edges to their songs.”

Blog Critics