“That’s The Beauty Of Music!” CLASH Meets Mind Enterprises

Mind Enterprises have literally travelled from their kitchen table to Coachella. The Italian duo started broadcasting to the world during the pandemic, their DJ sets and live performances overhauling the Italo synth sound for a new generation.

Since then, it’s blown up. With their tucked in polo shirts and ever-present Negronis, the chain-smoking duo are the stuff of internet lore, providing instant non-plugged reaction memes in amongst their stellar analogue programming.

Superb producers, Mind Enterprises prise open their sound still further on long-awaited debut album ‘Negroni Love’. Out now, it’s a mission statement of continental cool, blending Italo, trance, and even the odd Baroque aspect to craft something utterly true to them.

CLASH dialled ’em up fresh from a knockout Coachella performance to find out more.

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How does it feel to have ‘Negroni Love’ out there in the world?

Yeah, we’ve been preparing the ground for ‘Negroni Love’ for a long time. We started testing the songs in my kitchen last year. It’s part of this viral moment from when I was writing the actual record.

We’ve been playing the songs for a while! We played in America at Coachella, so for me it feels like the record has been out already. But the final product is here now, and it’s the last point of this long process — you know, it’s a good feeling. It’s not 0-100. It’s been a slow process.

You’ve come a long way since those videos in your Barcelona kitchen – has it sunk in how far you’ve travelled yet?

Yeah, the last year has been crazy, so many changes, things have gone very very far, farther than I could possibly imagine — that’s the beauty of music, you never know what could happen, and when things happen they go very quickly. At the moment we’re touring a lot, maybe a bit too much, and so in a way, I still haven’t processed what’s happened in the last year, because since we went viral, we started playing and we’ve been around and haven’t stopped since. I will probably need a couple months’ rest to really understand what’s happening. 

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The videos have really blown up – what do you think people are attracted to in the clips?

The videos are not very constructed, they’re kind of spontaneous — you can tell they’re two people just filming themselves in a kitchen or on a balcony. There’s no production, so probably this lack of barriers is just us being, idk, real. I guess it’s relatable, it’s just a couple of friends having fun smoking & drinking, which is something everyone does. The aesthetic, as well as this sort of feeling of nostalgia for the 80s with the outfits and style, and I guess the music is as well, is a big part of the recipe.

There’s an amazing sense of humour within Mind Enterprises, but you’ve also wicked producers and songwriters. Do you feel sometimes the comedic aspects over-shadows those?

Sometimes people connect with us because of our sense of humour, style, and comedic elements, but then they stay for the music. I don’t think these aspects battle against each other. They probably help because sometimes it’s easier to break the ground with an outgoing fun approach‚ but then you have to have the music behind to back it up.

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What is your studio set up? Are you all analogue?

The studio is completely analogue. I use the computer as a tape machine basically, just to record tracks. The creative process is around synthesizers and drum machines and samplers. So my setup at the moment is that I have this Jupiter 6, this synth from 1983, and then I have a couple of relics from the 80s, plus an Akai sampler that is controlling, as a sequencer, all these machines. And my approach is that I mostly don’t like to have too many synthesizers. I have a few of them, and I explore them deeply and get to the bone of them, and then I buy one here and there. I prefer to really work with a few instruments while knowing them very well. 

There are so many different influences on the album – even classical! – did you feel you had a point to prove?

I wrote this record in around two months. It was very quick, at least for me, because if I think about it, sometimes it took me years to close a record in the past, but in this case, I was really not overthinking, which I think is the correct approach for me, just write songs and try to finish them as quickly as possible.

I guess the Instagram moment helped because we were testing the songs while I was writing them, and because they were doing quite well, I got a boost in confidence. I felt the direction was the right one and that I could finish the record quickly. Did I have to prove a point? Not really. I didn’t really think about it too much, and the classical reference has always been there for me. I felt Italo Disco and baroque music have a point of contact, and it’s something that I always tried to recreate. It was a very spontaneous record.

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‘Another World’ pulls from the trance arena – are you a fan of that type of music?

Yeah, ‘Another World’ is a faster BPM, and it drew inspiration from 90s Italo dance — the closest reference is ‘Children’ by Miles. I don’t know if this is called trance music, I’m not really an expert. For me, it’s more about 90s records that I was listening to when I was a kid, mainly Italo dance Gila Gustino and these sorts of artists. Thats my other point of interest outside of 80s Italo disco.

‘Burn It!’ has elements of Baroque – was it fun to write and record?

It was one of the first songs I wrote when I started working on the record. It was fun. I think it’s just my sound, it’s the sound I’ve been working on for many years. It really comes from the ‘Panorama’ EP. That’s the first EP I released in 2016. I think it’s this sort of approach that I used to write this song. It’s really my comfort zone, I would say.

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‘Tacchini’ feels like a summer anthem – how has it been going down in your live set?

Coachella was incredible. The idea of being there, we couldn’t believe it, honestly. When they offered us to play, we were in shock. Even our agent was in shock. We had never played in America, and we received this amazing opportunity. And then being there at one of the best festivals in the world, if not the best one, the lights and atmosphere are really unique.

And we had to, as everywhere we go, we have to have a battle to bring booze on stage, drinking on stage, sometimes you’re not allowed, smoking, we always had to argue with the promoter. Because we like to smoke one last cigarette when we finish our set. And so at Coachella, when we’re entering the stage, there was a big sign saying no drinking, no smoking on stage. And we felt it’s such a big festival and such a big organization, but then at the end we asked them very politely if it was possible, and they were super relaxed, they let us drink and smoke. So it was great, it was a really fun moment.

What’s next for Mind Enterprises?

We have to finish out the year. We have many festivals this summer, and then we’re going back to America for our headline tour in North America — in sept/oct —then we’re going to South America. So we have to survive this last round of shows, and then I guess we will start taking it a bit more easy and then writing new music and see where we can go from there. 

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‘Negroni Love’ is out now.

Words: Robin Murray

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