Mindek are an emerging electronic duo comprising industry veterans Matt Abbott and Alex Powell. With over 15 years production and DJing experience between them, this new creative outlet will see a blending of classic influences with a fresh take on techno-tinged tech-house. Claiming a back catalogue of engineering and production triumphs that have seen success on industry charts and in the hands of the world’s best-known major and underground record labels, the pair have rightly decided it’s time for them to step into the sunlight with Mindek…
Hi guys…welcome to DMC. How are you enjoying this never-ending heatwave we seem to be experiencing?
Hey and thanks for having us! Suprisingly well. We have to take advantage of the good weather in the UK so we try our best not to complain about it. It only becomes an issue when we’re in the studio. It get’s seriously hot hot hot in there. Matt has just been over in Toronto hangin out with Mark Knight and Illyus & Barientos and even over there, it wasn’t as hot as here.
Let’s get stuck into Mindek… who are you and what do you do?
We are Alex Powell & Matt Abbott. We’ve both working in the dance music industry under other aliases but this is the first time we’ve worked together and it’s working pretty well! The ideas we have coming from different scenes really works and that’s what makes the Mindek sound what it is!
There are a lot of producers operating in tech house at the moment… what do you have to do to stand out at the moment?
A lot of tech house is just a groove and a bassline. There’s nothing wrong with that as it works in clubs, but we try to get more in there from our other walks of life: disco, trance, rave and electro elements to deliver something a little fresher. As always when breaking the mould, it’s tough to get people to embrace change, but it seems to be catching on now and we’re getting some great support.
You guys have been colleagues for a while at Label Worx right… what inspired you to work together as Mindek?
Thats’s right. We both handle the mixing and mastering for Label Worx among other things. For a good year in the Studio we kept saying “we should try something out”, bouncing ideas around and we finally made time to do it. Things came together pretty quickly and Mindek was formed. Originally we didn’t want anyone to know who we we’re, so we came up with the name Mindek. I beleive a “Mindek” is a name with no origin. So we thought it was pretty fitting at the time.
You’ve confessed a love of European disco… any specific artists or records that inspire you in the studio?
Apart from the obvious such as Daft Punk, and the early Roulé records, we’re inspired by a lot of the 90’s trance scene and the early 90’s acid and rave music. There’s a lot of magic in this music as things were tried out for the first time. A lot of what we do today wouldn’t happen if it wasn’t for those amazing experimental periods in music where people had nothing but a sampler and a few other bits of kit. We’re in a world where we have everything at our fingertips now and this can actually work against you by having far too many options. We find limiting our tool set helps us make something a lot quicker but still has some form of originality to it.
Techno and tech house has a reputation for taking itself quite seriously… do you think that an element of joy can be missing from those genres? And is that something you think about when you’re making music?
We speak about this all the time and the fact is, you can never take yourself too seriously. Although we love a black t-shirt, you can’t act like captain black unless you are in the 1% of coolest of cool artists who have done it for 10 years. This can translate into bland music with no character and although it’s sometime easy to run away with mad ideas and images, bringing kooky sounds and colours to your sound and image can really help show who you really are as artists.
We loved your Snailer EP on Stashed… any specific inspiration behind that? And do you have any more plans to work with the label?
‘Snailer’ was something that cam together after Miami Music Week earlier in the year. We were hanging out at the Dirtybird Pool Party and got the inspiration for this track there. Stripped back percussion with some quirky elements and a driving bassline. As soon as we got back, this came together in one studio session. We thought it was very different to what we usually make but it worked and came together easily. DJ SKT loved it and snapped it up after trying it out a few times on his Kiss FM show. We actually have a follow up single coming in September called ‘Sparks’.
Aside from Mindek, you also run the mixing and mastering programme at Label Worx… can you tell us about some of the projects you’ve worked on?
We have worked on projects across all styles of dance music. Some records have been released on Revealed, Spinnin’, Warner, Sony, Universal right across to the cool stuff on Do Not Sleep, Cuff, Toolroom and more. We never kiss and tell out of respect for our clients so I wouldn’t want to mention any names.
What have you got coming up in the rest of the year that we should be looking out for?
We currently have a free track out called ‘Feelin Street’ with Magnetic Mag. Something a little disco/housey from us. Our next official releases are coming up on Gene Farris’s Farris Wheel and as I mentioned before SKT’s Stashed. Our latest release ‘End Of The Line’ on Vangelis Kostoxenakis’s Talk Of The Town hit the Traxsource top 20 and had support from Jamie Jones, Mat.Joe, Detlef, Roger Sanchez and more. We hope to see our records getting some more top support over the next couple of months.
Anything else you’d like to tell us about…?
That’s about everything for now. Don’t forget to check us out online and if you like us. Give us a follow, like and share the love to your friends! Thanks for having us!
www.facebook.com/mindekmusic
