mssv is releasing their second studio album Human Reaction in their typical style: with a 58-show tour in the U.S. , parts of Canada an Europe. The band, composed of guitarist Mike Baggetta, Stephen Hodges on drums and mike watt on bass, creates music that is a heretofore unimagined hybrid of a punk power-trio and a dreamy experimental rock band, though they prefer the term “post-genre.” Human Reaction is being released on BIG EGO Records as a digital download, 12” LP vinyl, and via streaming platforms on September 1.

Their latest full-length album finds the oddly memorable hooks of their noir-tinged adventure music with a lot more vocals from the Main Steam Stop Valve leader Baggetta, adding more personality than ever before, alongside his bandmates, Hodges and watt, who also share in the vocal duties throughout the album.

While working out the new music on the previous mssv tour in 2022 (48 shows in 48 days to celebrate their self-titled debut), Baggetta felt it important to take the step of singing his own words every night, rather than assigning them to anyone else, with a lot of support and encouragement from Stephen and mike.

Recorded mostly on May Day immediately following that last tour, Human Reaction traverses a deeply broad sonic landscape, as expected from this nearly unclassifiable group, though with even deeper twists and turns. With inventively churning drum textures from Hodges (an instantly identifiable sound honed in his days with Tom Waits and David Lynch) and the full-steam-ahead all-in attitude from watt, (as he’s displayed throughout his storied career with MINUTEMEN, fIREHOSE, and The Stooges), there is still the impression of “pressure, combustion, power, and hissing clouds of sonic poetry,” as Premier Guitar said. Also evident is the more fearless exploring that comes from a band that has spent a lot of time together crafting their vision, as well as making room for guests like J Mascis, Petra Haden and Nels Cline on some of their previous releases.

Baggetta has had the pleasure to work all over the world with a wide range of visionary musicians across many generations including David Torn, Jim Keltner, Nels Cline, Psychic Temple, Jeff Coffin, Henry Kaiser, Petra Haden, Rev. Fred Lane, Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society, Joseph C. Philips’ Numinous with Imani Uzuri, Viktor Krauss, Jerome Harris, David Wax Museum, Jon Irabagon, Eivind Opsvik and Ruth Brown among many others. 

Even though Baggetta wrote all the songs specifically for these bandmates to play, there’s no telling which way the band will turn at any given moment, a proposition that becomes a promise when they break down and reassemble these songs live, with an instinct for restraint and an openness to anarchy.

“…vintage twang in service of Americana-meets exploratory Jazz-psych…” 

-Rolling Stone

“Mike Baggetta makes stealthy, mysterious music … he’s trying to do something personal with collective improvisation without ever getting in the way of beauty.”

-New York Times

“Baggetta is a player of immense subtlety across all dimension, working with an impressive palette of tones … distilling Fripp’s loopscapes with hints of John Fahey.”

-The Wire, UK

“Think pressure, combustion, power, and hissing clouds of sonic poetry, and you're in the right pipeline.”

-Premier Guitar

“…a kind of post-Frisellian sonic explorer … with his wild whammy-bar articulations, ambient looping and rippling arpeggios … full of subversive surprises, hellacious skronking, string-scraping and a general hornets’ nest of fuzz-toned dissonance”

-Slate Magazine

“Mike Baggetta is a genre-blurring guitar hero … at the forefront of an army of guitar innovators”

-JazzTimes