5 Feb 2018

Brooklyn Vegan puts MIEN's Black Habit in their tracks of the week


They say:

MIEN are a psych-rock supergroup featuring The Black Angels’ Alex Maas, The Horrors’ Tom Furse, Elephant Stone’s Rishi Dhir and The Earlies’ John-Mark Lapham. The seeds of the band were planted at SXSW well over a decade ago, where Maas ended up hanging out with Dhir and Lapham, forming friendships. Dhir also has played bass in The Black Angels who shared festival dates with The Horrors, which brought Furse into the picture. The real bonding moment, apparently, occurred over the mutual affection for The Association’s sitar-fueled “Wantin’ Ain’t Gettin” and a desire to cover the song.

That cover was attempted but never finished. It did, however, lead the four of them to start working on their own music together, mostly over the internet. A dark sound, heavy on atmosphere and analogue synths, emerged. “Imagine the Black Angels as Nico in her ’80s industrial phase mixed with George Harrison and Conny Plank,” is how Lapham puts it.

MIEN’s self-titled debut will be out April 6 via Rocket Recordings. The first single is “Black Habit,” which begins with a driving bassline which, with a motorik beat, soon gets into Neu! territory but then gets dragged into the gutter.

See the piece here: Brooklyn Vegan

And preorder the album here: Bandcamp

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