MS MR Want To Create Songs That Make You Want To Dance And Have Sex

MS MR’s upcoming shows at Splendour In The Grass have a lot to live up to. When the New York electro duo played Splendour in 2013, it “was one of the greatest experiences of my life”, enthuses producer Max Hershenow. “We came out, playing in front of 10,000 people, and it seemed like everyone knew all the words. We looked at each other and were like, ‘I feel like Beyoncé!’”

"It seemed like everyone knew all the words. We looked at each other and were like, ‘I feel like Beyoncé!’”

Through the release of their debut EP, 2012’s Candy Bar Creep Show and 2013 LP, Secondhand Rapture, MS MR – Hershenow and vocalist Lizzy Plapinger – went from being barely capable beginners to international artists. And, Hershenow admits, they “realised how much [they] like to dance on stage”. This meant that, for their second LP, How Does It Feel, that remained the goal. “The big thing, on this record, was wanting to make people move. To force them to move! Not dance music in an EDM way, but pop songs that make you want to grind and groove, feel sensual and sexy – more that side of dancing to music. Monument by Robyn & Royksöpp is the ultimate song for me in that regard. It’s so emotional that every time I hear it I feel like I’m going to cry, but it’s also this amazing pop song that makes you want to dance and have sex. That was what we kept coming back to in the studio: does this song make us want to dance? Does it make you feel good? Does it make you feel something both emotionally and physically?”

The duo has even considered creating choreographed dance routines for stage. Born and raised in Idaho, when he was a teenager, his parents – who work in “international health development” – moved the family to Honduras, then Ecuador. There, Hershenow discovered an interest in the development of cities. Yet, when studying urban planning at university in New York, he discovered modern dance, and ended up intent on becoming a choreographer. “Then pop music saved me.”

When he and Plapinger, who was running the NYC label Neon Gold, started MS MR, they were total beginners. “Lizzy had never sung, I had never produced, we had no idea what we were doing.” 

How Does It Feel finds MS MR truly stepping out. Though recorded in a “shitty little studio without a window” in Brooklyn’s Bushwick, it’s not a record inhabiting dark spaces. “The theme is stepping into the light at the end of the tunnel,” Hershenow says. “We liked the feelings of perseverance and overcoming, this idea of emotional evolution. That’s the theme that, to us, emerged.”