Into the Mind of Nubian Mindz

Colin Lindo, aka Alpha Omega and Nubian Mindz, is an electronic music veteran who can turn his hand to many genres and makes music that didn’t easily fit into specific genre definitions (we like that here). He has recorded for legendary jungle label Reinforced and his New World Chaos album on Archive is an underrated classic which deserves to have the tag ‘future music’ applied to it. It still sounds ahead of its time. Lately, Mr Lindo has released music on Dutch techno soul label Delsin and he has another 12-inch due out on the imprint next month. ISM posed some questions to the man and he kindly took time out to express his views on musical matters in an expansive, enlightening and candid manner.

ISM: Hey Colin, thanks for taking time out to talk to ISM. Your album from the beginning of the decade, New World Chaos, under your Nubian Mindz moniker, should be considered a true classic. It still sounds unique with its blend of breakbeat, techno, electro and that ‘broken beat’ sound. It’s almost impossible to neatly classify, what, and who, were the main influences that you drew upon for that record? How influential were Nu Era?

Marc & Dego have always been a huge influence on my output, even before I was signed to Reinforced I was a big fan of their music and still am. Those guys really showed me how to incorporate all your various influences into what you’re doing and look past a lot of the cliches that exist in most electronic music.

That’s one of the reasons why ‘New World Chaos’ sounded so different to everything else as I incorporated styles & sounds from a wide range of genres that have influenced me. That’s an ethos I always try to incorporate into whatever I’m doing musically as it stops things getting tired and stale.

If you look at what Marc Mac & Dego have done over the years they’ve never rested on their laurels and always push forward and I just hope I can have that same attitude throughout my career.

The other influences for me on the album were Carl Craig, Underground Resistance, Shut Up and Dance, Goldie, A Guy Called Gerald, early Warp Records and life in West London in general.

ISM: How did you hook up with Reinforced/2000 Black? Why did your album come out on Archive?

The Reinforced hookup came about after I had done a couple 12”s on AKO records as ‘Da Elite’. AKO was owned by DJ Stretch and
I just happened to play him ‘Realism’ and ‘New Armageddon’ and he said you need to play those to Dego and set up a meeting.
Dego liked what he heard and that was that.

A couple years later Dego told me he wanted to do a completely non d&b label and I had always been making techno, electro, hip hop and slower breakbeat stuff so he asked me to do something for him and that’s how that first 12″ on 2000 Black came about.

At the same time Enrico Volcov was hanging around the studios quite a bit, getting to know the guys and he happened to be in the studio when I played Dego ‘Mind Games’ & ‘Inner Science’ and he told me he was working on a similar label and also asked for some tracks to put out and it went from there.

Archive really pushed me to take what I was doing with d&b and channel what I had learned into something completely different and Enrico, like Dego, always gave me complete artistic freedom so I think I released some of my best work there. I’m not sure what they are upto at the moment musically but I’ve always got a lot of time for music lovers like those guys.

ISM: I’m sure that album won you a new host of fans (me included), did it also open up new musical avenues? And do people still mention it to you?

At the time the internet wasn’t anywhere near as widespread as it is now and I looked at Nubian Mindz as a side project to my Alpha Omega pseudonym so I didn’t take much notice of what was happening once it was released, I just wanted to get onto my next project.

Now I’m on myspace and chat forums and stuff and you get a lot of people telling you how much they were impressed by that album, even established producers who I’ve idolised from my teenage years have paid me compliments and that just blows me away.

Until recently I wasn’t aware of the albums impact or if anyone actually liked it, now with internet and all these social networking sites you can hear what people think of your music straight away,although I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not?

To be totally honest, I should have followed that album up and pushed the ‘Nubian Mindz’ moniker far more than I did and probably missed my chance to really establish the name back then but with the work I am putting in at the moment with Delsin, Rush Hour, Sula Muse and a few other labels I hope that things will take off again this year.

ISM: You are not a fan of that broken beat term, is that true?

Yes, the term never interested me. It just seemed silly, pointless,contrived and never really captured the whole scope of the music back then when it was completely out there and futuristic. Now it’s turned into coffee-table jazz and completely lost any notion of ‘future thinking’ which is such a shame as it was so promising 6 or 7 years ago. That aside, the old Reinforced heads still make incredible beats (Domu, Seiji, Dego, Somatik and Marc Mac) and also Aardvarck from Holland, but outside of those guys I really haven’t heard much that interests me.

ISM: You are still making jungle under your Alpha Omega guise, how do you view the jungle scene at present? do you relate to it as much now since so much of the current music has moved away from its roots?

Jungle now is a completely different kettle of fish, once the tech step sound of ’98-2000 took hold people just wanted more and more of that full-on, hard synthesized sound and the problem with that is artists just got harder, more obvious and then the loudness wars started. So now it’s just about who can have the loudest track with the most ‘in-your-face’ and obvious synth lead, not unlike trance.

It’s a shame this is the sound and attitude that dominates the music because it is still a very powerful form of music when done right and you can listen to a Goldie, Seba, D-Bridge or Fanu track to understand it’s potential but that’s not what the current listeners want to hear. They just want things loud, cheesy and as ‘in-your-face’ and simple as possible.

ISM: I know that you spend a lot of time in Dublin, a city where jungle seems to have died a death. Is this a true reflection of how it is elsewhere?

Well I’m not going to say drum & bass is dead because there are some artists who still sell very well and dj all over the globe but jungle, it’s ideas, attitude & ethos are well and truly gone. That whole ‘black’ influence on the music from guys like Ibiza Records, Production House, (early) Formation Records, (early) Full Cycle, Tom & Jerry and Shut up and Dance has completely disappeared , unfortunately.

That aside, drum & amp; bass, as it is right now, seems to be hanging in there and guys like High Contrast, Pendulum, Sub Focus, Lynx, Calibre, Clipz are all hugely popular (whether you like their music or not).

I just wonder how much harder & rock like it will all become before it all turns into one big ‘Bon Jovi’ tribute act 🙁

ISM: It seems impossible to pigeonhole you and you seem to move effortlessly through so many genres, so what do you think of dubstep and the hype it has been receiving of late, especially since you have been involved with the label Hyperdub which features artist-of-the-moment Burial?

I love the Burial stuff . . . it’s proper emotional music that reaches across many different genres. You can hear he used to listen to jungle & then there’s the UK Garage influence & now he’s sampling r&b vocals and cutting them up as well and mixing that with some serious Warp like atmospheres & Glitches. He’s just out there on his own & forging his own path and I got a lot of respect for the guy.

Dubstep deserves the hype, it’s new & exciting and borrows ideas from any other genre it feels like and I like that. There’s space for artists of all different kinds in that genre. I’ve checked out so many different artists from Geiom, Milanese, Mala & Kode 9 to Martyn, Benga, Skream, Pinch and Boxcutter and everyone seems to be completely different from the next. That kind of individuality is what has garnered so much interest whereas in drum & bass every other artist sounds the same or is trying their best to sound just like the top 10 A-List producers & djs and it all gets very samey very, very quickly.

Dubstep has so much diversity it really doesn’t seem to have that problem (yet).

P.S. I have some music forthcoming on ‘Boka’ Recs early this year…

ISM: You have released music on dutch label Delsin, the Typewriter 12″, and have a new release coming out this year on the label. it’s more ‘straight-up’ techno, do you have a different approach when making this music compared to other styles? which genre comes easiest to you?

Techno for me is the most fun genre to make. You have a completely wide open sound pallette when making techno. I mean you can sample any & everything and as long as it sounds right people will accept it. The other thing I enjoy is the sound synthesis involved in techno, you can really get deep into just one sound throughout a track in a way that many other genres just don’t seem to be ready for. It’s still a really futuristic style of music and to a large extent is probably too far ahead of it’s time. I mean I pick up old Dan Bell or Anthony Shakir records from the early ’90s and I’m still blown away by them in 2008!

Because of the wide open range of possibilities with the music I just love making it and learn so much about my equipment whenever I’m working on techno stuff as I tend to push everything so hard to get what I want and once you got some good drums running underneath it all people are going to listen.

ISM: If you had to pick, what would you class as your favourite style?

Techno or electro . . . electro is something I’ve loved from back in ’82/3 when I first heard ‘Planet Rock’ on the radio but I just don’t get the chance or the opportunity to produce much of it.

ISM: Tell us about the track ‘techno love’ on the new Delsin release, and also the track ‘Aqua Mindsate’ from the previous Delsin 12-inch, what do the vocals mean to you?

The vocals themselves are simply another layer of sound on those tracks,something else to try and keep the listeners interest.I’m not some super talented lyrical genius or anything and I know my limitations so when I add vocals to a track I try to make them blend with the music and keep everything balanced as opposed to the ‘vocal’ being the main star of the track.

The content of those vocals, with the techno stuff, is always set in some futuristic ‘1984’-type scenario where the state controls everything, technology has gone out of control and humanity struggles to exist. That’s always the idea I have in my head when writing vocals for techno tracks and to some extent that’s the impression I get when listening to a lot of techno, especially guys like Terrence Fixmer, Rob Hood, Jeff Mills, LFO or Surgeon.

It sounds like the music of oppressed people trying to break free and find a voice through music and technology. That’s the impression techno, and Electro, has always given me.

ISM: Your music under the Nubian Mindz moniker is steeped in black history/culture, would i be right in saying that? that it’s African/black roots of techno that you want to bring to the fore?

Well I always try to highlight my cultural influences and background in what I’m doing, it just seems natural to me. I grew up listening to a lot of politically charged hiphop and dub and reggae where the education and enlightenment of people took centre stage,vnot talk of bitches, hoes & crack. So as an artist I try to stay away from that stereotyped negativity and promote a more positive image of a black music artist.

That’s important to me especially nowadays when black music has taken ten steps backwards with people like 50 Cent acting out their studio thug image in their music and raising a generation on that foolishness who are influenced by it and become mini carbon copies of these so-called gangster rappers. Music is such a powerful medium it’s a shame it’s going to waste nowadays just to make a tiny few huge amounts of money promoting negativity.

ISM: What current techno/house artists are doin’ it for you now?

Karizma, Ame, Henrik Schwarz, Martyn, Carl Craig, Todd Sines, Claude Von Stroke, Dennis Ferrer, Quentin Harris, Osunlade, Legowelt and, of course, Theo Parrish. There is a ton of good music around and so many artists I could mention but those guys stand out right now.

I’m also catching up on a lot of old stuff from guys like Jan Jelenik, Luke Slater, Dan Bell, Joey Beltran and Speedy J. It’s hard to stay on top of everything, especially since I listened to so many different styles of music so every now and then I have to go back and catch up on things I’ve missed out on.

Things like Beatport and Boomkat really make it easy to do that now.

ISM: Any plans to do any music with the D1 posse?

I’ve met Eamonn Doyle at his DEAF night and we mentioned it briefly but nothing has happened yet. Hopefully we’ll get something going sometime this year as I’d love to do something for the label.

ISM: The New World Chaos album and early Nubian Mindz releases have a real raw analogue edge to them, what kind of equipment do you use to make your music? do you have a particular favourite piece of hardware that you couldn’t live without?

That whole album was done with a Clavia Nord Lead and an Akai s3000xl and Cubase on an Atari 520st. That’s why it sounds so raw and analogue. That Nord Lead has featured on every single record I’ve made since I got it 10 or so years ago and I couldn’t live without Nords. I also have a Nord3 which is starting to take centre stage and is featuring on all my new techno stuff. It’s a bit more polished and professional sounding to the original Nord Lead but it’s incredibly versatile and is the swiss knife of modern synthesizers.

On a down note, the Nord 3 is currently broken and needs repairing which doesn’t seem to be easy to do in Ireland 🙁

ISM: On your myspace page, you offer people the chance for people to buy your music on cdr. this is a very DIY approach, why have you taken this route? is it that hard nowadays, even for a respected artist like yourself, to get the music they want out there, with the demise of certain distributors?

I think the DIY approach to distribution of music could be the next step for a lot of artists,wether they are overground or underground.
The concept of a label controlling everything an artist puts out is pretty dated and for certain artists and producers it is a completely redundant idea, especially when you consider just how easy it is to get music out there for sale via the internet.

So I thought I would give it a try and put together a series of cds of my stuff that wasn’t picked up by labels and wasn’t
always geared towards djs, strict formats, rules & regulations. It was just me putting out music that I was making in my studio that was a million miles away from the industry way of thinking.

How much longer it continues, who knows? The numbers are small and barely cover any overheads but I enjoy doing it,and for those small numbers that do buy these cds they know they have personal music from me that in some cases, will never, ever see the light of day either by vinyl or mp3.

I’m also in the very early stages of putting together a digital label that should be up and running sometime this year so that should be fun.

ISM: Reinforced records did the soundtrack for the japanese anime ‘Fist of the North Star’, would scoring films be something you’d like to explore?

Yes. Scoring the Manga stuff was a total learning curve and everyone at Reinforced who was involved really enjoyed it. Putting music to pictures is quite a change in direction when all you are used to is cutting a couple breakbeats in your akai sampler and sequencing them in Cubase. All of a sudden you have to adapt everything you do to a preset image and at first you find it very, very restricting until you work out how you can incorporate what you do to help convey the message on screen.

It took me ages for the first couple episodes as I lacked confidence and it was so new to me but with a bit of work and lots of experimenting to see what works I eventually found my way and I know a few of the other artists involved felt the same way, except for Arcon 2 who were music veterans so could pretty much handle anything!!!

This year I will approach a few agencies who specifically deal with licensing music to film and other visual medium and try to get more work in that department. Mainly because it’s a break from the usual 9-5 studio stuff I am always doing, it is challenging and it pays well and right now in music any way you can make money is a godsend!!!

Times are really tough for a lot of us music artists so branching out into other avenues and revenues is essential to keep those bills paid and put food on the table.