Mystic Eyes Live at Kings AR

Mystic Eyes engaging the Morley

Mystic Eyes playing guitar with the maracas.

Unpeeling the tape as the show wraps up.

On the evening of November 15, 2025 in the alleyway leading to the Kings AR space in North Melbourne, a pop up show featuring improvisatory electric guitarists Mystic Eyes (VIC), Chris Smith (VIC) and Bruce Russell (NZ) was held.

This was one of those ‘if you know, you know’ shows. I arrived half way through Chris Smith’s set where a lush, iconoclastic guitar sound swept though the alley and out onto the street. This was followed by a short, uncharacteristically restrained set by Russell, focusing on a similarily defined set of sounds. There had been noise complaints by this stage, so maybe Russell was playing it safe, but many of us took a while to realise he had even started. It was a healthy crowd by this point.

The real star of this show was Mystic Eyes, Lisa MacKinney’s guitar and organ set. I have seen Lisa perform in this configuration many times, but there was something special about this set tonight.

The amp configuration was beautifully aligned - a seperate cube for her beloved Acetone organ, Smith’s Fender valve combo for the guitar. These blended beautifully and seamlessly into a column of sound.

MacKinney set up a drone, the first order of proceedings in any Mystic Eyes set - taping down a combination of notes on the organ set at a volume slighting overdrivng the amp, resulting in a warm distortion discreetly corrupting the beatings of select dissonant note combinations. This was soon paired with a selection of seamless loops captured once she had set up at the guitar, forming a centre to what was a sweeping, hypnotic performance.

Mystic Eyes has tools. The small Buddha Machine on a chain around her neck; the maracas to play the guitar with, and the ever present Morley whah pedal that shapes and controls the feedback that forms the centre this sound world. There is a sculptural component here - not just to the sound, but in MacKinney’s performance itself - lifting the guitar horizontally parallel with the floor, as if it is floating above it. The Buddha Machine dangling over the strings and striking them, overwhelming the chants just as they start to be heard through the pick ups of the guitar, only to creep back into the mix as the string sound subsides, slicing the sound picture. It also creates an eerie question and answer between the feedback and human chant, as if calling up ghosts from the instrument, only to be shut down by the guitar itself. The whah summons up the swirling feedback into a peak as it emerges from the retuned guitar’s interaction with the amp that MacKinney turns to face every once in a while.

The set ends with the slow unpeeling of the organ notes still humming, which now seem imbued with the guitar sounds that they bookended.

This is music for drone lovers, noise honourers and those who find song in the luscious curvature of feedback. If you go with it, you will be rewarded.

You can find out more about Mystic Eyes via Instagram.

DISCLAIMER: Cat Hope plays in music groups Super Luminum and Tremulant with Lisa MacKinney.