One Million Sounds - @millionyoung

Past interview with Ms. Commish for Cafe Magazine originally dated 5/5/2010

Millionyoung

Ever wake up one morning and wish that euphoric feeling from last night wouldn't end? Well, once you hear Mike Diaz (a.k.a. Millionyoung) you won't have to.

Millionyoung evokes in his music the intensity of House and Electro, and combines them with acoustic guitars and airy vocals. "It's odd because when I wrote the music I wasn't sure what genre it would fit into specifically. The short answer I gave people was, electronic, which is how iTunes first had me listed," says Millionyoung.

Born to Cuban and Puerto Rican parents, the 22-year old musician remembers how as a kid at big family gatherings he would dance and sing the whole night away. Those memories left a big impression. "I feel at this point its mostly instinctive or subconscious, but I definitely tend to make music that people can all dance or sing-a-long with," said Millionyoung. 

Millionyoung studied film in college and found a special interest in film scoring but after graduating with an AA at Palm Beach Community College and finishing a year at Florida Atlantic University, he decided he'd take a brief hiatus from school to begin work on a full-length album. Once he's finished recording and things settle down from touring, Million Young plans to go back and continue his studies in film to hopefully learn more about scoring music for movies. 

His travels have had a definite influence on his music. "Last March when I went on tour we stopped in Canada for a few days and it was really interesting. I had never been that far north now out of the country, and I was really curious to see what it would be like. Everyone we met was incredibly nice and it was cool seeing people there as enthused about my music as I am about Canadian bands like Metric or Broken Social Scene," he said. 

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Millionyoung takes "do it yourself" to new level, playing symphonic sounds coupled with sparkling guitar riffs, glittering melodies and beats over prerecorded laptop tracks. The guitar is his instrument of choice. He admits he still has a lot to learn too and when working on, or even listening to music, he tends to focus more on structures and the way songs are produced rather than the way any particular instrument is played. 

With over 3,000 online fans, a sold out EP and a strong blog following, it seems Young's keen ear and distinct ability to compose music is reaching the masses faster than anyone could have anticipated. Young is causing a stir on the indie music blog circuit: he's received a bevy of positive reviews from sites like Pitchfork and Gorilla vs Bear and when his "Be So True" EP was released on iTunes in January of this year, it remained in the top 10 in Electronic for four weeks. 

With recent gigs at South by Southwest (SXSW) and a line-up of future tour dates stretching across Atlantic, this Puerto-Cuban" with a knack for being "indie-pendent" is showing no signs of slowing down. 

Songs from his EP have been licensed for everything from compilation cds to video games. Songs like "Cynthia (Letting Up Despite Great Faults Remix)," "Chlorophyl," and his latest endeavor, "Love is all Around," a remake of the Mary Tyler Moore theme song are quickly garnering indie praise on blogs like Weekly Tape Deck, Cause=Time and Musicphile-osophy. Until now, Young has recorded all of his music on his laptop using acoustic and electric guitars, a few midi controllers and AbletonLive, a music producing software. 

Millionyoung recently started performing live with Awesome New Republic (ANR) and thinks the result has been fun and feels the fans are really going to have a great time at the shows when they tour in May. "We've been trying a lot of interesting approached that have really brought the songs to life" Millionyoung says.

Millionyoung will be playing shows at in New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Montreal and Toronto and then will be traveling abroad to perform in Amsterdam, Berlin and London.  

Listen on iTunes

Like him on Facebook/millionyoung 

Find him on Twitter - @millionyoung