UTG INTERVIEW: Mangoseed

Hot on the heels of their recently released effort Basquiat, Mangoseed took the time to speak with us about the record, the inspirations that fueled its creation, and what one could expect from the band in a live atmosphere. They also offered many different accounts on how the name Mangoseed came to be. Maybe you can decide which one sounds the most reasonable.

Read through the jump to get the in-depth scoop from Mangoseed members Nicholai La Barre, Richard Hardy, and Karlos Coleman and check out their video for “Brix-tone” following the conversation.

I read that Mangoseed formed very naturally. Can you tell us about how the four of you originally met up and what led to the formation of the band?

Nicholai La Barre: Karlos and myself worked together and we started sharing music, then we started jamming with some musicians and then decided to play some gigs. We were looking for a bass player and a friend of mine introduced me to Richard at a party. The same thing happened with Sam; we were looking for a drummer and a friend introduced us all. The first time Sam played with us it was over, he was the drummer.

Richard Hardy: A mutual friend Kiwan knew of me from some time I had spent in Trinidad and told Nico about me when he was looking for a bassist. Sam came on a spaceship from a far away planet called Ireland.

And how did you land on the name Mangoseed?

NLB: We didn’t have a name for a long time and we had to play this gig in North London, so I was on the phone with the promoter and she was asking the name of the band and the guys were shouting everything they could think of and someone said ‘Django’ and some else said ‘tree’ and I heard Mangoseed and the name stuck.

KC: My cousin videod his daughter when she was just starting to speak and one of her first long words was mango seed. She was so cute I kept saying it and I suggested we use it as a joke but it backfired.

RH: We were at a restaurant called the Mango Tree in London when we were trying to find a name. This was the birth of the band or the seed if you will…Karlos suggested the Mango and nico brought the seed.

You guys have wildly vast influences that you’ve stated and a lot of them can certainly be heard in your music in some way. Is there any specific formula when you’re writing as to how you implement these inspirations into a song or does that all come together organically in the process?

NLB: I think it’s a really organic process, in terms of the songwriting we are always playing around with ideas and bring things into the rehearsal room but there is a point when a song feels like it wants to go in a certain direction and we don’t block that we just let it go where it feels right, no matter really where that may be. It’s a lot about trust and also about not being precious with it, and letting the ideas run where they want to. So we end up going through loads of different ideas and then what seems like the song emerges, then we leave it for a while and when we play it again, we all collectively hate it and start all over.

RH: Back when we wrote “Standing On High” we had a talk and all of us agreed that the songs themselves, once we had started them, have a kind of life of their own and we should let them find the sounds and styles that seem right. A very regular phrase that you would hear in the Mangoseed band room is “Is that right?” and this question is asked not to find out if everything is musically “right” but if we all feel the song is speaking with a voice that we have come to know as our own

KC: 100% organic. We’ve tried a couple of times to make a certain kind of song for a specific genre but it never worked the music/song just rejected it.

Your new album, Basquiat, has a very obvious main source of influence. What is it about Jean-Michel that made this record become what it is?

NLB: I think we make songs like he made paintings. He used whatever he wanted to, to say how he felt in that moment and he didn’t care what people would think of the work, and it was also this marriage of what was happening on the streets and what was happening in the banks and in the government and wider society. We use all of those things to make songs–we use the old stuff that we really loved and new stuff as well in terms of trying out ideas and trying make a new sound.

So looking at how he made his work and what the end product looked like we tried to apply that to a whole bit of work so when you listen to the whole record you get this sense that is coming form loads of different places, but we have also sampled ourselves on later tracks so you get that there is coherence in it. As you listen it adds up, hopefully. Just like he would repeat ideas in a little corner of canvas we tried to do the same thing sonically.

KC: Mangoseed just make music, sounds by piecing together elements from everywhere. This could be tablas from India, dub bass from Jamaica, a cracking snare from hip hop America. This merging of difference creates its own non-specific vision. We thought what black modern icon has achieved that and is recognized for who they are without being compared to those before them, and that is Basquiat.

RH: It made us want to come out fighting with a strong sense of independence from the get-go. To absorb the artistic world that we had seen put it in a blender and spit it out with all the force and energy of a man possessed. It also made us all collectively decide that we wanted to make something brash and revolutionary.

And how would you describe this album in terms of style, lyrical content, and overall vibe to a potential listener that had never heard Mangoseed before?

NLB: I think it’s like being at this great outdoor festival with your friends and as the sun sets this music comes on and takes you from introspection to party in the space of 45 minutes. It’s like half the crowd is going wild and the other half is nodding their heads like “yeah, I get what you saying.”

RH: It is a reflection of an adventure that we have all taken as a band. We have all grown up listening to a vast range of styles and we hope that it comes across in our music. The love we have for all the music that has come before that inspire us can be found on this album. We are a group of like-minded souls that believe that music should have no boundaries and musicians should not have to adhere to any genre, unless they want to of course.

KC: Refreshing, poignant, foot-tapping escapism.

NLB: Ignore what me and Rich said, just use Karlos’ answer–it’s brilliant.

Your video for “Brix-tone” has some strong themes as well. What can you tell us about how the visuals correlate with the lyrics? And where were your parts filmed at?

KC: “Brix-tone” is a song from the heart of a young oppressed citizen who had to find harmony in a Brixton rife with racism and brutality. The community in the ’80s bottled a lot and made the best of a difficult time until a significant incident pushed them over the edge to fight to regain harmony and love for the area that I grew up in. We shot the vid in a couple of Brixton venues, on the streets of Brixton and at a bar not that far from there, the White Lion in Streatham.

NLB: It’s our homage to our little part of the world. A place with lots of vibes, good and bad. Karlos also directed so the story and visuals are really close to his heart.

RH: It shows the Brixton riots of the ’80s and then counterpoints it with the visuals of the parties and good times that happen all through out Brixton these days. Also showing the children at the end waving to the camera shows that some things never change, people just want to be happy and feel free and unencumbered, they don’t really want to hurt or kill at all.

With the album now released, how has the response been online and at shows? How did the record release show go?

NLB: The record release show was great, we couldn’t of asked for a better response, and the people seem to really love the record which is great. So it’s been going really well.

RH: The response from the online community has been insane; so much positivity and good vibes flowing from some many different corners of the world, and they have yet to see us live, where we really shine. We’ve even managed to get played on the radio in Australia off the back of the online buzz. We have only just started on the album-selling front but we are already getting people singing along at the shows and generally enjoying the vibe, dancing and partying to their hearts’ content.

KC: We’ve had some great reviews online. After our launch people have been getting back to us on how they loved the show because it just wasn’t a gig but they fed off the energy we put out there.

Speaking of shows, just from the clips in the “Brix-tone” video, it looks as though you guys really get into the music. How would you describe your live performance and how you deliver your work to the audience?

KC: Full-on party.

NLB: It’s pretty high-energy, and full-on. I think we really love playing live and we want the entire audience to come along with us for however long we are on stage. So it’s like a big full-on party I guess.

RH: We play from our heart and give as much as we can on any given night. Some days you have loads of energy to share and others it is the crowd that lifts you up like a wave that you turn round and let crash on the crowd. On the stage is where we come to life and truly let go. In Trinidad they have a saying when someone lets the music wash over them and lets the music take to them to that other place; this is the feeling we try and engender in our crowd.

Are you currently touring in support of the album or have plans to throughout the year?

NLB: We are starting a UK tour mid-June and we will be playing pretty steady till September.

RH: We are also in the midst of taking in which different areas of the world are showing the most interest in our sound and then planning tour dates around that. So far LA and the East Coast of Australia look really promising. We are also planning on releasing two more more videos in support of the album.

KC: We are also playing numerous South London venues over the next couple of months.

Mangoseed definitely isn’t your standard reggae band. What do you feel sets you guys apart from a lot of the acts that tend to have similar sounds?

KC: The fact that we don’t class ourselves as a reggae band, just a band.

NLB: I think ’cause we have no defined sound and it can go anywhere. There are things that we all really love playing so it’s stuff that we will always come back to–the reggae, funk, and hip hop stuff–but we make that sound cool and fresh and how we make interesting songs with those that can take the listener to different places. That’s kind of what what we are after. I think we also have nothing to lose so we can do what the hell we want so that feels cool.

RH: Every band that I know of that has taken the route of trying to progress beyond the limitations of one genre has always managed to come up with a different sound. Take Skindred and Sublime, two bands that on the face of it play rock infused reggae/dancehall but the end product is vastly different. The music from us is an unfiltered view at the sounds and ideas that have shaped us, and because each person is shaped by different events in their past I think that each band that crosses genres will have a distinctly different sound. In regards to our contemporaries, I can point out Gyazette from Trinidad, who are mixing up the Port-Of-Spain sound with some bluesy rock. Kin Sibling Rivalry with their punk-infused reggae and the DJ duo Jus Now bringing drum and bass to the Caribbean vibes. All of these groups, ourselves included, are trying to find the next natural evolution of that Caribbean flavor and all of us come up with something slightly different.

With the album out now, what have you been working on in the meantime? Any big plans for the rest of the year apart from the touring?

KC: We have songs in our back catalogue we are re-shaping and developing for our next album.

NLB: Yeah, we have been talking about the next album a fair bit, about what it wants to feel like and where we might record it, and how. We have some songs and some ideas that need to be fleshed out and I think as we tour and play they will start getting more and more solid. But the plan is play live as much as we can for the rest of the year and then take a break maybe and start working on some new stuff.

Brian Leak
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