#LabelWeek: Interview - Mina Tindle

Mina Tindle issued her sophomore album Parades on October 6th - you can read our review here. I had the opportunity to met her in Paris around a cup of coffee few days ahead the album release. We talked about her background, her influences and inspiration on the record.

Could you introduce you for our readers who don't know you yet?

Mina Tindle is the name of my music project. I have released my sophomore album "Parades" on October 6 and the first one was released 2 years ago. I also had the opportunity to present it live on a 2-year tour. I write, compose and sing my own songs both in French and English.

You have studied communication before pursuing a musical career, how did you come up with the decision?

Prior to entering my communication school, I've pursued my studies in humanities and art history - I actually did 2 years of a preparatory class specialized in art history. So my background was more of humanities. I've always been interested in arts, at some point I more or less wanted to work in museums or organized cultural events. I decided to go to a communication school because I knew I could do my internship at the Eurockéennes de Belfort* - and it's one of these French festival I love. So as soon as I was in that school I apply for this internship even though I had to live alone in Belfort for 5 months - you ought to be motivated. Anyways I didn't really know what to do in the communication field.

I choose to make music more because it was an opportunity to meet people. I had a band with Americans based in Durham, North Carolina; we met via myspace. The band was composed of 3 French people and 2 Americans. We made music together without having ever met. Then I move out in the USA for a while, we finally met and became real friends.

So at first music was related to this special relationship, and then it became a will to try something before completing my degree. I wanted to record 5 or 6 tracks, to make an EP. It was important to me to have an object, a kind of step marking my life. And then, this step turns out to be the beginning of a new professional path.

You've released your first EP Kingdom as a vinyl, is it important for you that music should be on an a record - that it becomes tangible?

Even if I'm part of the CD-generation, I think there is something beautiful in the vinyl as an object. I haven't bought much vinyls myself, I rather rediscovered my parents' ones. But there's something a bit "sacred" in listening to a vinyl. Like the object in itself stands out with its /sillots?/. When you look at it you can even guess how it will sound. It's really fascinating to hear vinyl-afficionado talking about it. Then listening a vinyl is a kind of ceremonial, it is more sacralized as listening to music nowadays. Todays what's awesome is that you can access to every music you want, but somehow it has become as kind of lift-music, something you don't really pay attention to. Whereas before, you had to be attentive because you had to change sides of the record. It's a more global experience. Vinyls are just a reminder that before mp3 there were a different way to listen to music - not just "consuming" it: it's kind of sacred listening, because you have to follow the songs order.

Now you get used to listen to music in shuffle with streaming platforms that suggest you coherent playlist with songs in shuffle.

Yet it's really different to make an album of say 10 songs that you have place in a certain order and that forms a whole. It's also pleasant to listen to it that way. 

In your music videos and on Parades album cover, we can sense influences coming from other arts for instance painting and dance. Where do you find you inspiration?

I'm essentially influenced by travels and people. Meeting people and get to know their stories fascinate me. As far as dance is concerned, I've been to the Impuls Tanz Festival, which is one of the biggest worldwide contemporary dance conventions in Vienna. It was the festival's 30-year anniversary last year so that was crazy! I saw Ann Trankam, Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker, Van der Keybus. Every nights seemed incredible to me - I don't know much about contemporary dance so it was also the opportunity to get influences from an art different from music. It's interesting to see how another way to express feelings and emotions works, I wanted to see what it'll do to me. As a matter of fact it was really interesting because there are so many things that are expressed differently through dance - even though the thematics are quite similar to music. But the art language is so different from music, I found it quite overwhelming. Also when you go to lots of gigs, it's also refreshing to attend a dance show. The live structure is pretty much similar to gigs but the dancers have a peculiar way to play with the lights and the setting is quite innovative compared to music show. It's inspiring when you make a show - thought we don't necessary have all the means to pursue such a goal. But even for a video clips, you can get influenced by the visual experience in a dance show. There's a real body language and that's fascinating!

And then if you like painting as I do, you can mix all of those influences. In Parades there are a lot of images, it's a sensory experience. I've made it so as to create echoes between images, tastes, colors and sounds.

When you're sensitive to everything like this, means of expressions are just an outcome of it. Therefore you find inspiration everywhere: in a museum, in dance show...      

Two of Parades tracks have been recorded in Brooklyn. Did your Mediterraneen origins and your experience in the USA had an impact on the mood of your music or video-clips?

In my music I am greatly influenced by American music - not so much because I used to live there, but more because I listen to a lot of indie rock and American folk. My musical crushes are American and Brazilian. Even if I'm not a specialist of American culture, it's great to study it. Obviously, when you're American everything seems normal to you, it's has another echo. I've read Bob Dylan biography for instance - he explains how he became this kind of living legend. There's a lot of mechanism to understand this, that seems obvious to American but less aprehensible to foreign people. So for American, Dylan and folk have really revolutionned traditional music while  using it at the same time. For foreign people, it's a culture that we don't necessaraly share so it seems a little more exotic. American music is something I've always loved, it shaped me in a wat. And indeed I used to live for 7 years in the USA, I still travel there from time to time cause I still have friends there. Perhaps will I live there again.

About the recording session in Brooklyn, these are two songs written in French, so I thought it was interesting to see how we could work a French material with Anglo-Saxon sensibility and American codes. It's the blending of these elements that interested me.

In Parades, French and English are more intermingled than in Taranta. I do find your songs really poetic. However isn't it difficult to play with the two languages - poetic logics are quite different between French and English?

I compare this with a way a painter uses acrylic, gouache and aquarelle. It urges you to use different technics and it takes the piece to another world. It's also a way to communicate a mood. All in all playing with different languages opens the way to different types of poetry. At least, that's how I see it, so maybe that's why it seems easy to me to shift from a language to another one. On the first record there was a song in Spannish - I didn't have the time for this record, but I would love to have songs in Spannish, Italian or Brazilian. I shift from a music to another - even as a listener - it carries me on different ways so why not shifting from a language to another if it enables you to dream?

Nowadays you can listen to Kraftwerk and then switch to English music or Brazilian sounds. That's a chance of this way people discover music and "consume" it - even though I don't like that word. Today there's no boundary anymore, so it's quite logical for artists to play with different languages and genres.

You've worked with well-known people on both of you albums (JP Nataf, Bryce Dessner from the National, Beirut's trombonist), what did you learn from these experiences ?

They’re all wonderful people. All in all it doesn’t really learn me anything. I just have the chance to be surrounded by interresting people in life in general. The people I have collaborated with have all a special approach toward music. If I haven’t met them, music industry would have probably scared me. Meeting people like JP Nataf – who has been my guardian angel and mentor – it was the opportunity to discover that he was a great artist that I loved, but moreover he is a really nice person and a good guy. If anything, meeting those people gave me confidence. To be able to work with them, it’s just a great opportunity to meet talented people, who have kept a great humanity and are beautiful people. I have an emotional relationship with music, it’s not cerebral. So for me it’s important to share those beautiful instants with someone. If people find magic in my records, it’s all due to the people who have worked on them. I’ve wrote the songs alone in my room, but that’s not it. While working on the record, people that I care participate in the process and add their magical touch.

It helps in that way, giving me confidence and adding magic to my music.

Your sophomore album was really awaited; does this add pressure on you for the next tour?

 I do feel some pressure. As a matter of fact our live crew changed a little bit: one of our former musicians left, and we have two new musicians. So we’ve been working like crazy on the live setting so as to be perfectly ready for tour. You are always a bit scared before the first shows. But we did our first gig at the beginning of October, so now it’s getting better. It’s exciting for the rest of the tour as well. Today - because I’ve done it before - it seems to me less freaking. However I’m still very scared and very anxious!

I remember that during the first tour, our first Parisian gig at la Maroquinerie – which was perhaps our 3^rd date of the tour, and a gig that people still talk to me be about – was wonderful. It’s part of the 3 best shows we did out of 120. Perhaps was it because we were all a bit stressed and vulnerable in a way, and it was perceptible so we put everything we had into our performance.

We ought to enjoy every moment of the tour, because we never know when our best night will happen. Every moment is precious!

You have the opportunity to spend the night with 3 persons - living or dead, real or not - who would it be?

I’ll pick Gille Deleuze, he is a French philosopher. I sometimes happen to fall asleep while listening to his Abécédaire. I confess… I want to hug him every time I am listening to him or reading him. Otherwise I think I’ll go with Paul McCartney and Nina Simone.

Something to say to our readers?

Come hang out with us on the Parades Tour! As for now, we have dates throughout France, in Belgium and in London. We will have a date in Germany as well in December and more dates to come in 2015.

Mina will be in London on November 13th, in Brussels on the 18th, in Paris on the 24th...