It kicks off like you’ve just stumbled into a basement party where someone spiked the punch with saxophones and synths, and no one’s quite sure if it’s a gig or a séance.
“Mingus, Dingus” is the latest brain-melting, smile-inducing cut from Mild Horses, and if you’re still trying to keep genre lines straight, good luck. It’s a rush — part cosmic funk, part sweaty post-punk sprint, and just self-aware enough to throw in a tongue-in-cheek football reference without losing its psychedelic strut.
Built like a mini-suite, “Mingus, Dingus” isn’t one idea stretched too far — it’s several colliding mid-air. There’s a jittery groove running through it all, pulsing like a panicked heartbeat under layers of warped jazz, synth squelches, and lo-fi weirdness. But don’t be fooled by the madness — this thing moves. It’s paced like a midfielder who forgot which way his team’s playing, zig-zagging with abandon but somehow always finding the right pass. It’s easy to imagine Leuw grinning behind the drum kit, throwing in melodica lines like easter eggs for the repeat listeners.
There’s also an urgency here, a sense of someone making up for lost time without being precious about it. That “career retrospective” energy he mentioned? You can feel it, but it’s more like a scrapbook thrown in the air and falling back down in 7/8 time. It feels playful, but there’s depth under the surface — an artist pulling from decades of noise-pop, punk fizz and electronic haze, distilling it into something frantic but unmistakably his.
About Mild Horses:
Mild Horses is the solo project of Matthew Leuw, a Brighton-based musical shapeshifter who’s been through more bands than your average gig poster in Camden. From Crest to Coin-op to the gloriously named 2 Hot 2 Sweat, he’s played with just about everyone from Yeah Yeah Yeahs to Mogwai and notched up radio sessions with the likes of John Peel. After a long break, he came back swinging with “Ignorance To Enlightenment And Back Again” in 2021 and followed it up with “Return To Dust” in 2023. This latest single? It’s a clear signal that he’s not done experimenting — not by a long shot.
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