Interview: Mind On Fire

“People have asked what Mind On Fire is before and I’ve always kind of struggled – it’s a monster...”

It’s been a long road since humble beginnings as a crew of bands looking for gigs back in 2004, but Mind On Fire Collective’s Joe Webster believes they’ve finally understood and tamed the beast that has kept growing over the years. Persistence and steady evolution (“We’ve not had a five year plan or anything like that – we just followed opportunities as they’ve come”) has been the key to laying the groundwork across a range of artistic and musical disciplines.

“I feel like we’re at a point now where we can say: 'this is what we do: we’re a record label, we run a website, we run occasional events showcasing experimental music from all around as well as having a big emphasis on pushing local music',” he adds, looking back over the years since he and his Mind On Fire Band bandmates took the first steps along a varied musical path. That path has meandered from podcasts to radio shows, promotion to performing, DJing to recording, with all manner of musical collaboration in between.

To start with, all that was a pipedream. The first strides down the Yellow Brick Road were merely seeking to gain self-sufficiency and avoid the venomous Pay 2 Play snakes at all costs. Webster explains: “We were at odds with that [P2P] and never really felt comfortable with that sort of scene. So when we started to do clubnights and collaborate as Mind On Fire (MOF), that was very much part of the ethos. We were an alternative to that Pay 2 Play scheme.”

“We were all playing in bands in our teens with a few friends and it just seemed like commonsense really that once we were ready to start doing gigs, the natural thing to do seemed to be to book a venue and put a gig on, so we put on a few gigs, not even realising that what you’re supposed to do is make a demo and send it off to real promoters!”

They themselves soon became real promoters, booking a mixture of local bands with the occasional headliner from further afield. To begin with, Webster recalls that often a multitude of tastes was catered for across one night, but soon they realised that success in this was erratic and not everyone could quaff their intense cocktail of sounds all in one dose. It’s one of the toughest tasks of the niche music promoter to strike a balance between what you’d like to see and what’ll draw in an audience, but a MOF Mint Lounge series managed to squeeze jazz/funk, hip hop and electronic bands onto the same bill with consistent success (“that stands out as some of the best stuff we’ve put together”).

Whether good or bad, they’ve tended to be memorable: “There’s been some hilarious moments! We had Shitmat getting thrown out of Music Box in his underpants because he’d been hanging off the rafters by his feet, swinging a chair at the crowd. I had to run around the club to find his trousers to take to him outside! That was pretty good!”

“Some of the standout shows have been Onra and Martyn at Mint Lounge and the series we did at Deaf Institute with My First Moth last year where we had Kelpe, Lone, Lukid – E-Man’s visuals for that were some of the best stuff we’ve had at anything.”

It’s not only this diversity of scheduling that has helped the Mind On Fire name to become synonymous with an eclectic array of local independent music. This month will see the release of the first single on Mind On Fire Recordings, but they’re no strangers to distributing recorded music. A series of compilation CDs, CD-Rs and digital releases have helped to define the extent to which the MOF are prepared to unearth and highlight originality and proficiency in non-commercial music. Danny Drive Thru, who is headlining the next Now Then Manchester showcase at Dulcimer on Thursday 11th August, is the first musician to command sole attention on a Mind On Fire Recordings vinyl pressing with his ‘Psychedelia Smith’ / ‘Violence Makes’ split.

The prospect of embarking on a venture into the notoriously unstable territory of music sales could be a daunting prospect. But the Emerald City is in sight and Webster is nothing but pleased to see it around the corner; the culmination of seven years' work is near – a fact that will be marked by an October celebration gig.

“I’ve always found it quite exciting actually; how it’s developed with digitals and stuff. I think it has democratised music a lot. We’ve known that it’s a scary time to be trying to start a label selling vinyl and we know that the margins aren’t good and that sort of thing, but that’s not why we’re doing it, you know, it’s for a love – not just a love of the music – but we wanted to have that tangible product, the whole thing with the artwork and everything.”

Webster’s reasoning is unsurprising given the tendency of MOF to support the arts broadly. En route, they’ve worked alongside Sketch City, Herbal Sessions and most recently produced the Hear No Evil See No Evil publication / compilation combination with onefiveeight. Unafraid to explore different visual styles, Mind On Fire have made E-man (aka Cycloptics) a mainstay of live VJing at their shows. But one of their most distinctive artistic elements so far is the range of design for event posters.

“We always made a point at first of having completely different artwork for each event – for the flyers we never had any proper logo or branding for at least the first 3 or 4 years there was no set logo. So we might get a kind of theme going for a series of events but we commission different artists to do different flyers so if you look at our flyers it’s chaos!”

All of which indicates the wider sense of kinship and collaboration amongst the Collective. Webster is keen to point out the introductions that MOF have facilitated over the years (“We’ve had artists who’ve played at the same event then started working on tunes together”) but even within the Mind On Fire group itself there’s a certain fluidity that over time has seen faces come and go. Whoever is involved, there is always a sense of genuine democracy.

“We used to try to decide everything together and then realised that it was impractical – we still do a lot together but for specific events or projects someone will take a lead on it. But then for the releases and stuff like that there are a lot of meetings and arguments with everyone wanting to get their input in.”

One recent decision was their next physical output after the imminent Danny Drive Thru record. “We’re chatting to Paper Tiger about doing a 12” for them but there’s no set date on it yet,” Webster reveals. The production duo transform into an eight-piece live act and have already caught the eye of Jus Like Music Records, who released their debut EP ‘Worldwide Takeover’ last month. In the meantime there are a few live shows courtesy of Mind On Fire with Thursday 11th August’s collaboration with Now Then Manchester followed by a website launch for Upper Space chalked up for late August, the aforementioned seventh birthday bash and then an enticing Ghostpoet headlined gig at Deaf Institute. All of which suggests that, despite finding its niche, the Mind On Fire Collective won’t be resting on their laurels; there’s still plenty of road ahead yet.

Words: Ian Pennington
Images: Courtesy of Mind On Fire


Now Then Manchester will team up with Mind On Fire for our next show at Dulcimer on Thursday 11th August. Below, Joe describes the event...

First up we’ve got Danny Drive Thru, who’s the next release on the label. He’s an awesome beat-maker and he’s been doing it for quite a long time so I’ll be really excited to hear some of his stuff. The last few times he’s performed with G-Kut, so it’d be good to see him flying solo. We’ll have the record there as well – it’ll be the first time it’ll be available.

With the Mind On Fire Band we’ve done a lot of stuff with TNC before so we know those guys pretty well but that new Dayse & Aver EP blew me away – I think it’s one of the best records this year and I think it’ll be pretty hilarious pulling it off in here (Dulcimer)! We’re working on doing the D&A EP as a full live set so we’re quite excited about that. We’ve not really started jamming yet so it’ll be a good few months off. But it’s in the pipeline anyway.

And then Vieka [pronounced Vee-Ecker]. We had those guys on at Sounds From The Other City and they were really good, Chantelle’s got a great voice and they do this awesome loop-pedal wizardry. Joe Luckin’s too good on the drums for his age – it’s not fair!

Then there’s MOF DJing and Ben from the label, who goes by the name Zoir [pronounced Zo-ear], is going to DJ some of his own productions – maybe doing a live Ableton set, that’s the plan. Bargain at £3!

HldTght Interview

HldTght are a new curation collective in Manchester. Now Then hung out with one half of the founding duo ahead of their debut exhibition at Soup Kitchen this week. Until the beans were spilled last week they kept their identity hidden – even from their best friends. You might say that sounds hella pretentious when combined with their vowel-less name, but it stems from a certain necessity. Which all makes it seem really serious, especially when you have to write it down in an interview.


"It's not serious. The exhibition is fun, but generally the part of the art world in Manchester we work in is really constrictive. As you would get working in such a social community, everyone knows everyone. And the same people are being put in exhibitions together time after time. Then it can go two ways – either everyone starts feeding off each other in a progressive way, or people just start seeing the same influences and don't push themselves in the positive directions their talent deserves. You get disillusioned and uninspired and obviously it takes the fun out of making art. HldTght is about encouraging artists to work outside of their normal practice, with no pressure attached to selling their work or for the work to fit in with their 'aesthetic'.”

What’s gone wrong in Manchester particularly?

“There is a lot of talent in Manchester, but there are very few venues or organizations that will put on shows of artists’ work if they don’t feel any of it will sell, and they don’t have funding to cover their costs. Free For Arts Festival is starting to go some of the way towards making things happen - motivating artists to get up and find unusual venues for events, but it only goes on for one week in October, and everyone who takes part is supported under the welcoming arm of the Free For Arts press machine. Sketch City and Upper Space have both faded into the dust and soon Mooch N4 Street Art Gallery will be gone. All these projects prove that there is a lot of interest [in the city], but unless there is someone there to drive the talent and push things to happen, nothing will. HldTght is starting something new, completely funded out of our own pockets. We want to prove to ourselves and to Manchester that you can put on big shows, with big names for little to no money if you have the drive.”

“HldTght is about immediacy, it’s about not waiting for a gallery or bar to call you up and ask you to hang some work. We saw a space we liked and decided to put a show on. Six weeks later I am surrounded by people spray painting on the walls and hammering structures together. There needn’t be red tape and proposals and funding applications, there just needs to be the desire to give the city something it is missing out on, and something to talk about.”


So why the secrecy over who you are?

“We knew if we'd said it was us from the start some people would have doubted how ambitious it is, seeing as we're friends with many of the artists. Creating a name and theme was what we needed to do first, then by keeping our personalities hidden it allowed us to be anyone, someone ‘important’ even, and see what great ideas the artists had in return because they really felt they'd need to step up because they had been contacted by a 'curation collective', not by 'their mate they saw last night'.”

That makes it sound like it’s the same group of people you said were being put in exhibitions together all the time...

“Of course it's not just about putting on people we know, we've got 30 great artists in different disciplines, really big names like Agent and Penfold [who curated July 2009's edition of our big bro magazine Now Then Sheffield]. We've got elements no-one should expect like performance artists as well.”


How do the pieces come together then? Should we expect something totally unrecognisable from the artists we know well?

“We just told people the basic concept and invited them to come up with fresh suggestions and new work that would fit. From the start the emphasis of the exhibition has always been on trying new things, pushing yourself and working outside of your normal discipline. I’m not asking an illustrator to make a sculpture or performance artists to paint, but I am asking maybe a spray paint artist to work more with brushes, painters to try Poscas rather than acrylics, or to try painting different subjects and ideas within their work that wouldn't normally fit into their practice's portfolio.”

Joyride Playground – we don’t want to come up with some ridiculous thesis that probably ends up using the rubbish word ‘juxtaposition’, can you tell us about the concept?

“Joyride Playground is about playing with something too much until you reach a good or bad point. If you joyride a car, chances are you’re bound to have fun, but you have stolen something that is not yours with the intention of pushing it until you crash or burn it out. Most joyriders are underage and do not have a license, just like all the artists choosing to use new mediums for the show aren't practiced or professionals; they are joyriding on the back of an entire movement created by graffiti and aerosol art when picking up a spray can. We basically want people to stick two fingers up and say ‘fuck you, I don’t know how to use it but I’m going to give it a go and I’m going to have fun doing it.’”


Talking about having fun doing it, it’s fairly rare to get an open studio – is that just because it’s all actually being created on site?

“Having an open studio is really important for us to allow people to come and see the process. I’m always amazed by time-lapse videos of exhibitions, but why watch a video, come down to the open studio and meet the artists, ask them questions and find out how they do things, getting stuck in; it's all about everyone being on the same level. By taking away artists’ safety nets of working under their usual practice, everyone becomes slightly vulnerable. Artists you may have been following on flickr or through blogs become just the same as you and everyone starts to work together, pooling advice and skills.”

nd th nm?

"We liked the idea of 'hold tight' because of the association with playgrounds and fun fairs. The abbreviation [HldTght] makes it sound a little less like something your dad would say to you when he pushes you on a swing in the park, because, let’s face it, we only hang out in parks to drink and smoke these days.”

Joyride Playground exhibition @ Soup Kitchen
30 illustrators, artists, sculptors, performance artists and graffiti writers
Open studio // 13-16th Dec // 12-8pm
Launch party // 17th Dec // 7-10pm // after party babies 10-2am
Runs from Sat 18th Dec ‘til mid-February. Open Mon-Sat 12-5pm

Interviewer: Sam Bass
Images: HldTght