Although a seemingly new act, Mild Minds has quickly paved his path as an influential artist at the forefront of electronic music production worldwide. While the past decade has seen Benjamin David as the driving force behind several successful artist projects, 2017 saw him birth Mild Minds while searching to find that child-like state of creation once again.
He introduced Mild Minds with “SWIM” in 2018 and was immediately signed by international tastemaker labels such as ODESZA’s Foreign Family Collective, Ninja Tune’s Counter Records in Europe, and Inertia in Australia.
Soon, the LA based Australian was asked to remix ODESZA and Tycho, in addition to touring with everyone from Tycho to Big Wild. As “SWIM” eclipsed over 5 million Spotify streams, its remix from ford. notably garnered a 2020 GRAMMY® Award nomination in the category of “Best Remixed Recording.”
On its heels, his full-length debut MOOD, earned widespread acclaim including a short list nomination for the Australian Music Prize, while remixes continued to pour in from such tastemaking producers as Jacques Greene, Laurence Guy, DJ Boring, and Throwing Snow.
Mild Minds defines his music as an exploration between the intersection of humanity and technology; an observational top down view of human progress. He finds inspiration in human movement, patterns, mathematics and artificial intelligence. As diverse as each track may be, he always extracts human emotion from electronic sounds.
The newly GRAMMY® Award-nominated artist, vocalist, and producer assembles electronic music intentionally agnostic of genre. He manages to do so through a genre bending combination of UK garage, house, ambient music and the organic samples in which he created debut album MOOD.
“Through MOOD, I definitely reconnected with music in a more basic, almost childlike way, it all happened so naturally and feverishly.” he affirms. However, last year he was able to dive a little deeper and rediscover this feeling in an even more meaningful way stating, “I think people want something more from music, I know I do as I feel most of it has been lacking a level of depth for a while now. Through 2020 we seemed to let go of the more transient things in life like trends and high-fashion and something just clicked. I wanted to see how I can step up my music from a more emotional level and make it mean something more this next time around.”.
Speaking of, his 2021 single “NO SKIN” embodies this spirit of forward motion and personal connection. Fusing cinematic synths and a simmering drum sample, it layers his striking falsetto over organic production. His voice echoes in dreamy congruence with the slick sonic backdrop.
Lyrically, ‘NO SKIN’ is about always being on the run and having no skin in the game,” Benjamin David (Mild Minds) explains. “I knew a person in my life that I met who always moved from town to town, from one friend group to another, constantly making mistakes and then up and leaving with no ties to her old self. Kind of like ‘nobody can hurt you’ because you’re always leaving them; there’s something tender and sad about that”.
In the end, Ben’s personal connection welcomes a universal embrace. “I’m really hoping to define my own voice,” he leaves off. “I’m pushing down deep to give an honest feeling. My long term goal is to get in a position where I can consistently deliver that.”
