PREMIERE: Mutual Identities - Ace High [The Hand You Were Dealt, Particle Magazine]
New music alert! Minneapolis duo Mutual Identities have a tape dropping soon. Pre-order The Hand You Were Dealt on Bandcamp–available digitally on August 1, tapes ship soon after. We caught up with Ethan and Nathan to talk about their first physical release. Stream track A1 “Ace High” above.
It’s been nearly three years since we last checked in with Mutual Identities. What have y’all been up to?
We've been quite active! Over the past three years, we've played numerous gigs around Minneapolis and greater Minnesota. We've also released six projects, a mix of singles and EPs—although one EP got the boot from Spotify's automated deletion and permanent ban! But that's a story for another time.
Back when [flyover] last covered us, we were roommates with our shared home studio. Now, we've gone our separate ways but relocated our music gear/production set up to Origin Studios—a multi-unit hub for music and arts in Minneapolis. It's buzzing with friends spread across different units, each doing some seriously cool stuff in the city.
Our studio setup is shared with AKKO, Malion, and our buddy Steve (no, not the Steve you're thinking of). We've created a collective production setup with hardware always ready to go. It's a special space we're fortunate to share with close friends who are equally talented musicians, promoters, sound techs, visual artists—you name it!
We’re premiering “Ace High,” one of two new Mutual Identities tracks from an upcoming cassette EP. How’d the tape come together?
We're thrilled—it's our first physical release!
About a year ago, we were hanging out with our friend Willy (XMINUS1) in a chill spot at the Red Sea, chatting about some of our unreleased tracks. Willy was keen on collaborating for a themed release on his label, Particle Magazine. We jumped at the chance to work on a concept EP and were pumped to have someone eager to put out our music!
The tape runs 45 minutes on each side. Side A features our EP with two original tracks and remixes from XMINUS1 (MPLS), Alexis Rose (formerly known as Astrolex, MPLS), Linquency (Chicago), 8circuit (Seattle), and Eve Defy (Seattle).
Side B is the first 45 minutes of our Communion Sundays 2023 live PA set in Minneapolis. We wanted to show the two core avenues of our music project: Production and live hardware performance.
“Ace High” is a fast, dark, squirmy techno ripper with a rectangular waveform. Are the sun-soaked house vibes from, say, your flyover mix long in the rearview?
No, not necessarily—though these days, we find ourselves creating music at faster tempos with a bit more edge. If you listen to Ace High, you'll still catch hints of those melodic chords and our typical song structures, which lean more towards a "song" vibe than just a "track." The dubby atmospheric pads in the background remain a key element of our sound and continue to play a significant role in our production. As we journey forward with our music, we're drawing from all our inspirations while focusing on tempo and rhythmic styles to shape our sound.
[Note: The “track” vs. “song” debate is fraught and emotionally charged for many in our community. flyover does not endorse the definitions deployed by Mutual Identities. -Ed.]
Mutual Identities’ tagline is “an ever-changing sonic experience…” I even own a shirt with that slogan across the front. Would you walk us through some of the changes that brought you to your current sound?
We've been deeply inspired by many live hardware artists since we started. Every year, we catch another live act and are just blown away by their sound palettes and the execution of their sets.
These experiences have led us to make significant changes to our own live setup. After the second year of The Great Beyond, Ethan realized we needed to upgrade our main drum machine from a sampler to a high-quality drum synth. Nathan had a similar epiphany—he needed a more complex polyphonic synth for our live performances. Exploring new genres in his solo work has opened up fresh avenues for our collaborations.
We both came to understand that we needed equipment with more "life" to be more intentional with our low end, kicks, and sub-bass. We also wanted the ability to manipulate core melodic elements with synths instead of samples.
Have you been playing a lot of poker lately?
Gambling away that sweet, sweet Spotify streaming revenue…
Jokes aside – this EP taps into the unpredictable and often unfair distributions of life’s trials and tribulations. Geopolitical events both here in the US and across the globe have been on our minds a lot over the last couple years.
