The many faces of Minilogue

The many faces of Minilogue

17 October, 2008 | 1.08PM

• Written by: Lee Smith
• Filed under: Music News: popkomm

It’s been a big year for Swedish duo Minilogue, who released an epic double album (‘Animals’), a lauded leftfield side-project (IMPS), and a run of hit singles (notably the massive ‘Snake Charmer’), as well as introducing minimal techno to a mainstream audience, via a certain TV ad currently running in the UK.

Beatportal’s Lee Smith grabbed the pair after their storming show at last week’s Beatport Popkomm party at Weekend, Berlin, and found out that Minilogue’s plans have only just begun…

All Night Long

We’re approaching peak hour on the 12th floor of Weekend, Berlin, at this year’s Beatport Popkomm party.

The gathered throng are cheering their approval for a pair of chuffed-looking chaps onstage, who’ve spent the last 90 or so minutes laying down their instantly recognisable, trippily-tinged grooves, which sit somewhere in the murky hinterland between minimal techno, abstract house and quality trance.

It’s another triumph for Minilogue, one of the most prominent acts to emerge from the electronic underground in recent times.

“We really enjoyed ourselves tonight,” says Sebastian Mullaert when we corner the duo for an interview as they step off stage. “We don’t normally get to play as long as want – which is two hours. But tonight someone canceled, so we were really happy – not happy because they canceled, of course, but because we just love to play longer.”

Their desire to play for longer than your average wham-bam, in-out live act makes perfect sense, musically speaking.

The Minilogue ‘sound’ is all about drawn out, ever-swelling moods, relying on trance-like immersion more than explosive, obvious drops. In fact, their ideal set-up would be to take control of a whole night’s programming.

“You have so many parties, so many DJs, so many artists now,” explains Marcus Henriksson, the other half of the Minilogue equation.

“So we want to somehow make something different. Our vision is to do everything for the whole night.

“I think Minilogue and Son Kite [the pair’s original music project] fit perfectly on the same night, and as DJs we have a huge range of sounds. So we would start from nothing, like dub, ambient, and freestyle stuff, then slowly build to house, then techno. Son Kite is ideal for the peak time, whilst Minilogue is more like a stretched out, psychedelic thing for later on.”

Have they been able to do any parties like this yet?

“Only a few times,” admits Markus. “We can do it in Japan, but in Germany, for example, they don’t know the Son Kite name. They’re like ‘I don’t like trance’, or ‘I only like techno’, or something.

“For us, it’s all about trying to do something different, it doesn’t matter what style.”

“For that you need true respect from people,” interjects Sebastian. “You need to have something very special. For something like Son Kite, people here would be very suspicious. They’d be like, ‘Hey, that’s not our sound’. 

“But in Japan, we get to play really long sets – it can be more improvised and more than just a flat line. We can really tell our story.”

Give Trance a Chance

The Minilogue story has its roots in the Swedish trance scene of the early ‘90s, when the duo met and formed the aforementioned Son Kite.

“Back then, I was the raver dancing when Mark was DJing,” Sebastian recalls.

“When we started making music together as Son Kite, at first, the music was very stripped down, trancey house, quite slow - I guess how people would describe Minilogue today.

“It wasn’t strictly any genre, so it didn’t fit anywhere. But in ’98 and ’99, the trance scene was very fed up with how it was sounding, and the whole scene was looking for something new and fresh.

“That’s when they picked up on what we’re doing now. We always had Minilogue as a side project, but three years ago we decided to devote ourselves to it, because today, when you get to a certain point, you need a lot of energy to keep it up.

“It takes so much time. So we slowed down with Son Kite, gave Minilogue a chance, and now we have the freedom to do both projects side by side.”

The pair’s decision to focus on Minilogue clearly paid off, with hits like ‘Elephant’s Parade’ and ‘Hitchhiker’s Choice’ establishing them firmly on the radar of DJs from all corners of the scene.

Renowned for their prolific output, the quality never seems to suffer – they’ve even found time to investigate leftfield freestyle funk as IMPS in collaboration with Australian duo Philip Rex and Ian Chaplin. And they’re not stopping there, either.

“We also have another side project with some friends from a band called NOW,” announces Mark.

“It’s more like krautrock, psychedelic stuff, with some electronics. We’re gonna call it MINOW. Our big dream is to fuse our electronics with the live group, to try and bring all this together – to bring together all of our history.”

Schizo-Scando-techno

It’s a bit of a cliché to ask Scandinavian musicians if their music somehow ‘reflects’ the icy, stark beauty of their homeland, but in Minilogue’s case, the environment around them has more practical implications.

“Always, you are a product of where you are,” confirms Markus.

“Of course, if we lived in a hot country with a lot of sunshine, it would change our way of living. But in a cold, shitty, climate, then you have to go to the studio!”

Sebastian concurs: “Sweden is easy for us to live in. People aren’t interested in being famous here, and you can live well, you don’t need to just do it for the money or something.

“From the airport to our houses, in the middle of the forest, is about 20 minutes. So we can travel easily, but we can come back, and be basic and relaxed at home, too.”

So is there a masterplan for world domination, or are they improvising as they go along?

“Our masterplan is to just go with the flow,” offers Sebastian.

“In the dance scene you have the big advantage of being able to get paid well for your gigs. So we use this as an opportunity to find time for all the other stuff we don’t get paid for. That’s the big thing for us – to be able to the keep the things that allow us to be free with the music we want to put out.”

With umpteen monikers, projects and ideas on the horizon – not to mention their forthcoming video mix DVD of ‘Animals’ – Minilogue’s near-schizophrenic explosion shows few signs of abating.

Like their endlessly tunneling, stretched-out grooves, the direction they’ll be spinning off to next is anyone’s guess.

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