Daren Muti: Ten Songs

Paris artist, Daren Muti, first landed on the radar in 2020 with his excellent debut five-song EP, Citizens Facing the Sun. A series of songs extracted from the fissures of slowcore, dream-pop and post-rock, it was a debut that showcased Muti’s meticulous nature of songwriting. No stone was left unturned.

The next three years saw Muti being relatively quiet, and it wasn’t until mid-way through last year year where he released two singles that would go on to form his debut long-player, Ten Songs.

Like Citizens Facing the Sun, Ten Songs sees Muti reveling in the art of simple songcraft. Whilst true, it’s actually the self-awareness that makes his songs what they are. Muti knows his limitations, zeroing in on his strengths to provide the best possible results. Muti understands the value of space, and while many in the realm of folk and the singer-songwriter aesthetic over-reach in believing that the ‘voice is everything’, not only is this wrong, but also, such an approach devalues the art.  

Daren Muti Interview: “The purpose of a song is to balance light and shadow”

The rawness to Muti’s songs is what make them great; his vocal delivery, fragile and morose, mirroring the downer sonics that ring from his guitar. It’s sad music, and on Ten Songs, he’s immersed in the sombre undertones. Whilst Citizens Facing the Sun was a vital marker in Muti’s sound world, Ten Songs sees the Parisian explore further afield, with songs that contain a new shade of darkness.

It’s evident from first track, A Path. Equal parts melancholic and metallic, this is sadcore conceived from the bottom of the vortex. On Stylish Decent and Bristol, Muti explores the chiming dreamscapes that sit somewhere between Slowdive’s Pygmalion and a lost ballad from American Football, while on Bluebird and Clean Slate, he cross-pollinates sound and theme with the spatial imagery that adorns the covers of both Citizens Facing the Sun and Ten Songs.

From here, Muti’s songs only get stronger. Firstly, with the The Night Truth – a dreamy, slowcore lullaby that you would associate with Early Day Miners, and one a song that turns lonely spaces into hopefully ones. Which is something that Lament Song is not. Everything its title suggest, Muti sculptures a brand of atmospheric loner-core that doesn’t mend the heart but smashes it into even tinier pieces.

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While closing track, Discover, sees Muti showcasing his Low worship, it’s the nervous energy that proceeds on penultimate track, Uneasy, that best uncovers Muti’s persona. Unashamedly aloof and someone who lets their music do the talking, in a day and age where people pay PRs to tell them how great their music is, Muti is someone who believes the best work is done in the shadows. A true outlier and seemingly one not born for these times, even so, it shouldn’t hide the fact that Ten Songs is an unearthed gem that should be reaching a far wider audience than it currently is.

Ten Songs is a record where the idea overrides everything else. And where ideas are concerned, Muti proves that it’s the simple ones that are quite often the best.

Ten Songs is out now via Du Haut du Sol. Purchase from Bandcamp.