Interview: Minderbender

Appropriating a moniker from a character in Joseph Heller's popular 1961 novel Catch-22, Kieran Brown and Michael van Dyk formed Minderbender a couple of years ago after relocating from Christchurch to Wellington. The music they create is steeped in electronic rhythms created by a drum machine and loop pedal, while the two artists work on guitar, synth and bass to build up post-punk tunes capped with industrious vocals from van Dyk. The Wellington-based pair have successfully captured this dynamically stratified sound on their debut album Emotions, a package which contains 12-tracks that each take their title from a human feeling.

Moving beyond the music, the pair have also married their sound to an intriguing aesthetic that for a large part is created by capital city artist Cameron James Brown. As well as concocting their album cover, Brown directed the recent video for 'Euphoria', which takes its visual cues from Gary Numan's crisp artwork for 1979 album The Pleasure Principle, but is laced with dazzling mandalas that pulse to the songs darting rhythm. We caught up with Michael and Kieran to have a chat about the process of putting their album together, and the importance of visual elements ahead of their album release party tomorrow...

Click here to read the full interview with MinderBender.