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Introducing Juno Mamba, the new Aussie producer echoing Bonobo and Boards of Canada

Meet Juno Mamba, the newest signing to esteemed Aussie electronic label Soothsayer (Willaris. K, Dro Carey, Love Deluxe). His debut single Flicker is officially out to the world, and it’s flooring listeners all over.

After absorbing the single ourselves, we caught up with Vinci Andanar to find out where he came from, the kind of gear that brought Flicker to life, and what lies ahead.

juno mamba soothsayer flicker

Fans of Jon Hopkins’ or Bonobo’s cinematic electronica will fall head over heels for Juno Mamba, the newest signing to Melbourne label Soothsayer.

First up, we were eager to find out where Andanar’s relationship with music began.

“Music has always been a significant part of my life. My earliest memories were waking up of a morning to mum playing classical pieces on the piano. Every new emotion I experienced growing up was always connected to music, especially in high school.”

“That’s when I really started to experience things I’d never gone through. I found it satisfying when I could harness certain emotions and heighten or prolong those feelings just by listening to music.”

Flicker itself was inspired a visit to Japan, in particular an extremely moving experience Andanar had with the architectural work of Tadao Ando. As he tells us, his relationship to physical forms had always been a point of reference for his art.

“I’ve always been drawn to space and structures. When I was young, I would sketch my dream house, so I’ve always had this strange fascination for creating and visualising space. I find it much easier to create when I’m inspired by my surroundings, whether that’s a natural space or something constructed by humans. I had never been moved by architecture as much as being inside a Tadao Ando building.”

“Looking back, it was one of the key moments that sparked the inspiration and curiosity to explore electronic sounds and create music I hadn’t made before. I prefer to make music in certain spaces or while I’m in transit. A lot of the music I’ve made so far has been made either on the train or while traveling to new places.”

Ideas sketched in transit always have a certain ethereal quality to them; by nature they’re only accessible for fleeting periods of time. What many producers struggle with is transforming those sketches into fully-formed songs back in the studio.

Andanar’s studio, although he’ll call it simple, sounds like a dream.

“My production setup in the studio is quite simple now; MacBook Pro, UAD Apollo Twin, Presonus R65 monitors, DT770 headphones, Ableton, various plugins, Minilogue XD, Digitone, bass/electric guitar and my guitar pedals. There was a period where I was doing a lot of music production for other musicians and mixing their records, so I acquired a lot of incredible studio gear. Recently I decided to strip it all back to the essentials I need and focus more on making music.”

“When I start playing live, I’ll have a drummer with me and I’ll be playing guitar and keys. I want the live show to have a lot of raw energy and having a live drummer will help achieve that. There’s nothing quite like performing music with other passionate musicians and the nuances and unpredictability that comes with it. The release of energy and dynamics through live music is so powerful.”

As for what’s next for the Juno Mamba project, Andanar asserts that Flicker is just the beginning.

“Flicker was the first song I wrote for this project and very much an exploratory process. My background in music has been centred around playing guitar in bands so creating full electronic compositions is quite new to me. I’m finding the process extremely exciting and liberating. I pushed my production skills as far as I could take it with Flicker to set a standard moving forward.”

“I’ve been working on a bunch of songs for the past 15 months, which will hopefully be out soon. I’m trying to take my music as far as I can in a few directions but still within its own world. It’s the first time since high school where I’ve felt a sense of freedom to create without judgement. I’m not quite there yet but it’s where I want to be.”

 

Flicker is out now.