Interview by Jesse Ship
Amanda Warner (aka MNDR) has been living a pretty serious musician’s life, moving from her hometown of Fargo, North Dakota to Oakland to New York, all in the name of music and exploration. She’s been touring hard since 2009 and was on her third music gathering of the weekend when we caught up at Montreal’s Osheaga Festival—which is fitting since she’s actually secretly French Canadian (well, half of her is). But that half has built bonds with other Canadian divas like Austra and Emily Haines’ band Metric, both of whom she’s remixed in the past year. Singles are still trickling out from her 2012 album Feed Me Diamonds, with another one in production, and she’ll soon be releasing a tune with RAC and Bloc Party’s Kele Okereke. Mon dieu!
There’s a lot of uncertainty as to how to pronounce your artist name. Set us straight!
It’s just the letters M-N-D-R. It’s the DJ/IDM name that I used in the Bay Area, a combination of my legal name Amanda Warner. I had a lot of criticism with that at first, but now with artists like SBTRKT, it’s lifted. I will claim that I paved the first no-vowel road officially in 2004.
So what do you do for fun in New York?
I have a party called Youth Group that I throw with another DJ friend named Musa who DJs for Spank Rock. The party is starting to make tech-house and downloadable dance singles as part of the party/label. We will be releasing those in the fall; it’s a footwork, tech-house, dirty-bird genre. We call it that because the party’s on a Wednesday; it works across the board.
What sort of music influences you?
I moved to Oakland to be at the US center for techno and tech-house. I like labels like dirtybird and Kid 606’s Tigerbeat6. So that’s my world. For the Feed Me Diamondsalbum, I wanted to make a straightforward pop album; not something electro-pop-defining but I have a feature coming out with RAC that will be more electronic-sounding.
Did signing to Ultra influence that?
Patrick [Moxey, Ultra’s owner] wanted to sign a pop project, not so much an EDM thing. I am definitely an artist that they don’t usually sign but they’re growing the label and signed some more hybrid acts like myself and TOKiMONSTA.
How did you meet Connor Cruise?
I played on The Late Show with David Letterman and his dad, whom you may know, Tom Cruise, was the guest. He threw an after-party where Connor DJed. He asked if he could do the remix and I agreed. He’s really young but he’s a great DJ—totally not bullshit. I think he’ll do well.
Feed Me Diamonds is a reference to the performance artist Marina Abramovic. Can you tell us more about that?
I think when you’re writing pop songs and trying to be really honest in your writing, you have to go to really scary emotional places. She was doing her MoMA sitting-and-staring piece [The Artist Is Present] for 30 days where she sat for eight hours straight. I thought, “Oh, I love her so much,” and in my research I found she claimed her father was murdered by being fed diamonds, a tactic used to kill kings and queens. If you do that, it rips your GIs apart and you bleed out. But it’s a beautiful metaphor and I knew it would be a great song idea. Lyrically, I go through different phases when I write songs. This album was very personal and politically motivated. I draw a lot of inspiration from sounds, beats, music that I love, which is mainly electronic. It’s a marriage of both. Prior to that, it was mostly just beats and sounds. Now it’s fun to be motivated lyrically as well; it’s a different creative thing.
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