MXGPU: Where the Machines Cry With You
Lisbon-based duo MXGPU — a.k.a. Moullinex and GPU Panic — aren’t just riding the electronic wave; they’re rewriting the language of connection on the dancefloor. Their latest single “find u,” out now via Discotexas, is the newest chapter in their sci-fi-meets-soul saga of a debut album Sudden Light, dropping September 26. And if you’ve ever wanted to feel like your heart was floating in a synth bath under a James Turrell sky, this one’s for you.
“‘find u’ was always an outlier,” they told us in our Frank151 interview. “It never quite fit in. We knew it had two possible fates: end up in the bin, or take the spotlight.” Lucky for us, it did the latter.
Blending liquid drum & bass grooves with staccato synths and lyrics like “I’m saving time for me and you / I’m there to guide you through it all,” the track balances emotional clarity with pulse-raising momentum, somewhere between Caribou and Porter Robinson, but still wholly MXGPU.
This unlikely synergy didn’t start with a co-write. It began with GPU Panic (aka Guilherme Tomé Ribeiro) joining Moullinex’s live band back in 2016. “Gui has a voice that just sounds true to me,” Moullinex (aka Luís Clara Gomes) said. “That was probably the trigger.” What followed was years of shared instinct and unspoken understanding, culminating in a project that now stands entirely on its own.
If the music’s intimate, the live show’s even more disarming. Their 360° performances place them literally in the middle of the crowd, part digital séance, part storytelling ritual. GPU Panic’s vocals hit face-to-face while a glowing light rig breathes like a being of its own. “We’re deep sci-fi and architecture fans,” they said, name-dropping James Turrell, Olafur Eliasson, and brutalist icons like Tadao Ando as inspirations. “It’s about dissolving the boundaries between audience and artist — we want to belong to it.”
The duo has already turned heads with sets at Primavera Porto, Wonderfruit in Thailand, and Lisbon pop-ups inside MAAT and Casa da Música. But 2025 marks their first foray into North America, with upcoming 360° shows at Silo in Brooklyn (Oct 2) and The Roxy in LA (Oct 4). “We’re bringing our debut album, and the literal light show that accompanies it,” they teased.
Beyond the album, expect more singles, maybe another video filmed in a “truly unforgettable” location, and, of course, more spontaneous pop-ups. “And for the late-night existential crises?” they laughed. “Our door is always open.”
They might be named after French appliances and GPU crashes, but MXGPU’s mission is surprisingly analog: to make you feel something real. And they do.
Follow them here and catch the wave before it becomes legend.
Listen to “‘find u’ here.
Check out FRANK’s interview with MXPGU below:
Frank151: Alright, let’s start off with the signature Frank151 icebreaker. If you could throw your own music festival—no budget, no rules—who are your top three headliners? Dead or alive. And let’s get three from each of you.
Well that’s a good starting point!
Moullinex: Parliament/Funkadelic feat. Sun Ra, Prince (and the Revolution), Beach Boys b2b the Beatles b2b Harry Nilson with the Motown’s Funk Brothers as backing band.
GPU Panic: Daft Punk, Janis Joplin, Floating Points with Pharoah Sanders and the London Symphony Orchestra.
Frank151: What made you two want to team up in the first place, and when did you know this wasn’t just a one-off?
GPU Panic: I joined Moullinex live band in 2016 to play guitar and do back vocals, and since then things just naturally evolved into collaborating more and more until the day we felt that we needed to give a name that it’s more than two names together, it’s a new thing with its own life. It’s been quite a journey.
Moullinex: Gui (GPU) has an unique voice, that just sounds “true” to me. That was probably the trigger for wanting to work with him more and more, and discovering a likeminded musician and professional behind that beautiful voice was a great surprise.
Frank151: The name MXGPU obviously combines both of your artist names. But let’s take it back: what do “Moullinex” and “GPU Panic” actually mean to you? What’s the story behind choosing those names in the first place?
Moullinex: It’s a nod to a french brand of electronic appliances (e.g. kitchen mixers etc). I first fell in love with house music through French Touch (Air, Roulé, Crydamoure, Alan Braxe, Lifelike, Cassius) so a little homage through “french electronics” was necessary.
GPU Panic: For me, it all started with computers breaking down — full-on system failures. I was working on my first EP, still without an artist name, and my computer was constantly crashing, shutting down every few minutes. Sometimes it would crash 50 times while I was trying to finish a track. One day, I saw the error report, and right there in bold: ‘GPU Panic.’ It felt like a perfect, ironic tribute to my total dependence on technology — so I took it as a name.
Frank151: You’ve both carved out a similar vibe. What were you hoping to tap into or push further when working together on MXGPU?
MXGPU: giving something a name helps it become real, more than the sum of its parts. We feel like the music we did together before MXGPU was a process to reach this moment where we are now. We share an unspoken understanding about how the music should be, much because we respect each other’s instincts when creating, and the results are very much aligned, from a conceptual but also sonic point of view. Something so magic needed its own name.
Frank151: Your new single “find u” takes a different turn with its liquid drum & bass energy, yet it still hits that emotional, almost ethereal sweet spot you’re known for. How did the track come together? And how would you describe the MXGPU sound for someone listening for the first time?
MXGPU: ‘find u’ was as effortless as it feels. We came up with the basis for the instrumental quite fast, just a 30s loop that pretty much had every ingredient of the track’s vibe on it already, and it felt so magic and powerful that we let it sit in a drawer of unfinished projects for a long time, only to pick it up just before finishing the album. During one of these sessions we showed the song to Malou, whom we were working with on ‘ease’, and she immediately joined the songwriting.
You’ve described the MXGPU sound quite well, we think (and thank you for that!). Our songs are almost always an equilibrium of light and darkness, emotional vulnerability and raw energy, artificial and human sounds.
Frank151: Who are your biggest musical inspirations? Feel free to name some Portuguese legends—or anyone from across the world that shaped your sound.
Moullinex: I grew up surrounded by great music! My family listened to a lot of Brazilian MPB and Jazz (Chico Buarque, Gal Costa, Hermeto Pascoal) and many Portuguese icons like Sérgio Godinho and José Afonso. We would go to a lot of concerts. That shaped my taste (and passion) in many ways. Later I first discovered electronic music through The Prodigy, Chemical Brothers, Daft Punk and Air, and since I was a nerd, the computer was my natural instrument, electronic music my natural expression… By digging back to discover what these artists had sampled or were referencing, I discovered disco, funk and soul, and fell in love with Stevie Wonder, Motown, Salsoul.
GPU Panic: I grew up listening to a lot of records that truly shaped my early music taste, and all of them combined were definitely a trigger to start learning music and writing my first songs. Portuguese artists like Sergio Godinho, José Afonso, António Variações are definitely on top of my list. Also grew up listening to a lot of Brazilian music from artists like Chico Buarque, Caetano Veloso, Toquinho, Vinicius de Moraes, Gal Costa, Cartola and . I would spend a lot of time listening to music that my father loved on car trips. I would listen a lot to all The Beatles albums, Pink Floyd and Emerson Lake and Palmer. Electronic music came in early also through the influence of my older brothers and sister – a lot of “french touch” (Super Discount compilations were always playing around), The Chemical Brothers, Daft Punk, LTJ Bukem, Basement Jaxx and Prodigy. I was also surrounded by jazz, because my grandmother, who plays piano always loved jazz and artists like Oscar Peterson, Count Basie, so that led me into buying my first records and they were all jazz, Oscar Peterson, Count Basie, Chet Baker and Miles Davis and the Portuguese Mário Laginha and Bernardo Sassetti.
Frank151: How would you describe the current music and street culture scene in Lisbon? And what have you discovered or been inspired by while touring internationally?
Moullinex: Lisbon experienced a cultural renaissance in the last decade, alongside rampant gentrification and some policies that rendered the city unaffordable for much of its locals. The music scene is eclectic and really alive, with many events and offerings happening practically daily. But the flipside is the city becoming more and more unaffordable for the very locals that are responsible for much of its magic. You’ve seen it before, like in Mexico City, swarms of digital nomads that don’t really contribute to the culture are driving housing prices up and turning centuries-old businesses into your generic avocado toast place.
The beauty of travelling is finding unique things, getting exposure to other cultures and ways of living. I’m so happy any time I feel I’m off the beaten path, like finding out about something for the first time. One of my favorite discoveries was the Gnawa music of North Africa, which I had a deep dive on through collaborating with Lala Tamar and many other talented Moroccan musicians for Moga Festival, in Essaouira. Or a Colombian label called LLorona records, which release super traditional music alongside electronic reinterpretations of it and events blending it all together. Such fun.
GPU Panic: Lisbon has a very rich cultural landscape, mostly when you look at the population size, which is very small compared to other major cities. It’s a city that is deeply suffering from gentrification and creating a very unbalanced space with a housing crisis, which affects the way the cultural scene evolves and establishes its ground and maps the city landscape, making it relevant and unique. It’s something that needs reflection and that suffers from a lack of good ideas. On a more positive side of things, it’s a very lively city with a lot a different cultural offers. There’s a lot of events in pop-up locations, like in other parts of the world, and that’s changing a lot the way clubbing is being experienced. I feel that this new way of experiencing clubbing, where you just need to show up and pay your ticket it’s more attractive for the crowd. The experience of being in cue for a long time and maybe after all the wait you are not allowed to enter because of club policies whatever, go in a direction that doesn’t benefit clubbing as a place where everyone feels welcome. You see these days that the different “tribes” from different genres know where the parties they want to go are and it also created a space for new audiences to just experience different vibes on a more regular basis.
Traveling this much is definitely one of the best perks of the job. Lately, we’ve been spending a lot of time in Southeast Asia, and one of the most memorable moments was discovering the Japanese artist GROUND at Wonderfruit last year. We shared the Polygon stage with him, and his performance was incredibly powerful and inspiring. In such a massive scene where new names emerge every day, it’s very refreshing to be genuinely surprised by someone you’ve never heard of before.
Frank151: One of the coolest things about MXGPU is your live show experience. Your Instagram has been giving us glimpses… How do you conceptualize your live performances? What’s the prep like?
MXGPU: Thank you! We’re deep sci-fi and architecture fans. Especially where these worlds intersect: brutalism, installation art, immersive experiences. The works of James Turrell, Anthony McCall, Olafur Eliasson but also buildings by Tadao Ando, Oscar Niemeyer and other modernist masters. Those are our main inspirations when approaching the live show’s aesthetics. Taking “gathering around the firepit to hear a storyteller” metaphor as a starting point, we have placed ourselves in the middle of the audience, so we can try and belong to it. The light coming from above us often feels like a physical construction, creating a sense of “being” in something together. That’s the goal of it all, trying to dilute all the boundaries between ourselves and the audience, and in the process trying to create something magic.
When preparing new songs for the live show, we sit down with our lighting team and together develop the laser and lighting constructions to go with the music, in perfect sync. It’s often a dance of music and light, and we love to get our hands in the visual side of things too.
Whenever possible, we also mess with the other senses in the performance, like at MAAT in Lisbon, where we had an olfactory installation, conditioning the room’s smell to further reach a sense of immersion.
Frank151: Your upcoming set at The Roxy in LA will be a 360° show, which is kind of your thing now. What drew you to this “in the round” format? What are you hoping the LA crowd experiences that night?
We’re really excited to bring this show to these iconic venues. As performers, our goal is to create an experience that, albeit limited in time and space, can create ripples outside that moment and change us all a little bit. Those are our fondest memories and deepest experiences as concert-goers, so we’re working hard to try and recreate them ourselves, in every show we do.
To this 360º experience we’ll bring our debut album, Sudden Light, and the literal light show that accompanies it, both to Roxy, in LA and Silo, in Brooklyn.
Frank151: Anything else we should keep an eye out for in 2025? More singles, videos, pop-up shows, late-night existential crises?
MXGPU: Our album Sudden Light drops on September 26th. Until then, we’ve still got a couple more singles coming your way — and we’re currently filming a very special video concert in a truly unique and unforgettable location.
We love pop-ups. We’ve been doing quite a few in unexpected places and at spontaneous moments, so you can always expect… something.
And for the late-night existential crises? Our door is always open. It keeps us on our toes. Plat du jour.