the masters, they are tiny

Well see, its been awhile since we communicated with you, dear blog. we have really good excuses like 'we moved!' and 'we're busy!' but we have a saying here at Mute US: no good dead goes unpunished. and so we bring you a new irregular feature.....the highlight of the week!
This week's Highlight of the week was a NYC performance by Brooklyn's own teen-sibling-super- duo, Tiny Masters of Today. Ada, 13 and Ivan, 15 along with their friend drummer Jackson (i know he's not related, but they let him in the band anyway. can you believe it?!) opened for Art Brut at NYC's Mercury Lounge in advance of their new album Skeletons which is released June 16 2009.

Some photos of their nothing-short-of-adorable live set are below. They ironically covered Sonic Youth's "Youth Against Facism" at this show, and also at a Sonic Youth party which Gawker saw fit to cover HERE, read all about it.

small ness in charge

sibling conference moment

ivan shreds

a girl and her bass

muteants justin, erik and stephanie really enjoyed the show.

Justin Be Famous

Thing about working in this industry is, sometimes people wanna interview you. And we ask ourselves, 'why?'. This article that follows might answer the question.

CMJ interviews Justin Spindler

Hercules and Love Affair - Pitchfork TV

This was recorded in October and at long last....here's the finish product. Always amazing live, this looks and sounds incredible. Watch it! Both parts! YOU BELONG TO ME TONIGHT!

OMO + Richard Hawley does V-Day

Yeah I guess the last week wasn't very exciting because it's time for OMO again (Overheard in the Mute Office). More tasty morsels of hilarity. Oh did we mention its nearly 60 degrees outside and we were able to go COATLESS during the lunchbreak?! Did we mention we got a lunchbreak?!!!

"Did you send them any money...?"
"Let's send them a disease in a jar"
"Eyelashes are so last year"
"I like that as a blog name: 'I'm Totally Blanking'"
"I don't think you're allowed to send body parts in the mail"
"It's the special olympics copy machine"
"Nick is very pirate-like"

New abbreviations:
CF = clusterfuck
GO= goose egg


Also Richard Hawley recorded a beautiful version of "Early Morning Rain" for the Star*ucks V***tine's Day Sampler. Check it out here

Overheard in the Mute office

You know that blog 'Overheard in New York'? No? Well it's a blog where people send in the stupid shit they overhear other people saying around town. Some if it's really funny. No I won't give you an example. But to that effect, we here at Mute also say ridiculously stupid and funny things. Therefore we will bring you this weekly blog post: Overheard in the Mute Office (aka OMO).

"She's so green, she's yellow & blue separate. She's not even green YET." (nicole)

"I don't consider dancing to be having fun" (Lauren)

"birthing is so 90's" (Justin)

"they should be strung up and eaten by wolves" (Erik)

"what is your molecular damage?" (Nicole to Justin)

Our building is, like, totally famous.

Mute's current office is located in a tall building between Soho, Tribeca and the Holland Tunnel. Aside from our music floor, which we share, the entire building is mostly populated by union headquarters. Then there's us. Oh and Uniqlo too. It's intense (don't forget your ID or the lady at the front desk will unleash the fury and it's not pretty). Our floor used to be a medical floor. You get the picture. Also the cops do this crazy drill where they get every cop car known to man to drive up 6th Avenue flashing their lights and park on our block, alarming us to no end at least once a week. A 'drill' they call it.

Well, imagine my surprise as I watched the first episode of everyone's favorite show, FLIGHT OF THE CONCHORDS and saw a very familiar building posing as the office building of the guys 'former' manager, Murray.

Check it:
Evidence? Not quite. But wait, there's more.

They're walking out of the building! With a table! Do you know how many times a day I walk out that door!

Here's the building in its full glory:

If you squint you can see our office on the fourth floor.

Here they're talking to their stalker fan who is protesting something. I forgot.


When I came in to share this story with the other Muteants, Justin promptly said 'Oh yeah, I knew about that.' But did he tell anyone? NO! I don't know where I was that day since I'm always here. But I missed Brett and Jemaine, in our very own building. THE HORROR! Maybe one of the more exciting things that's happened in this building. Because the set of Law & Order: Criminal Intent really just isn't that exciting (they film here sometimes too)(sorry mom). So the point is, that coworkers keep secrets from each other. Important ones involving cute New Zealanders. Clearly I had to fire him on the spot.

And, because I was so excited about this minute of stardom, I forgot to watch the rest of the episode.


- Nicole

The Mute Feast aka Mute Loaf 2009

Normally Lauren spends all her time talking about shoegaze or eating babies. Even tho she's vegetarian (we don't get it either). What started off as a conversation about chili cookoff turned into an idea for office-wide potluck of smepic (smallishly epic) proportions.

Behold, the invitation:

Now, we all spent this weekend watching M83 perform at both Irving Plaza AND open for The Killers at MSG, so somehow we had to find some time to chef up some non-poisoned food for our colleagues. Here's how it went down:

Adam - breakfast burritos
Leslie - homemade glazed donus, grapefruit/pomegranate fruit salad
Foti - Fresh squeezed honeybell orange juice
Justin - Croissants (for the record, he didn't make these)
Stephanie - Baked brie & cherry topping
Nicole - Leek Quiche
Erik - Goulash
Lauren - peanut butter & jelly sandwiches in the shape of brontosauruses
Kevin - Whoopie Pies

Jealous? Yeah we thought so. Here are some photos to go with it. We forgot to take them before we started eating.

There was also a silver foil crown made to go to the winner. Tho no one knew there was going to be a winner. But I get to choose!! Bwah hahahahaha.

Welcome to The Muteant.

You know, a lot of things go on around here. Like, a lot. "Here" being the Mute Records North American offices. We manage to amuse ourselves on a regular basis and thought, why not share this with the world? Clearly there need to be more blogs out there. So we've revived The Muteant. It used to be a paper zine (remember zines? remember PAPER?) back in "the 90s". But with this digital age and what not, no more physical cutting & pasting (tho I quite like cut & paste). So we welcome you, check back on occasion for super duper secrets, high profile missions, facts, figures, fun and of course, Mute artists' news. Maybe we'll even put up some fun stuff you can't get anywhere else. You'll just have to wait and see, wontcha.

till later, Nicole