Next month, Benjamin David – also known as Ben Plant, founding producer/bassist in Miami Horror – will embark on his first-ever Australian tour as Mild Minds. Read on for the list of dates, ticket info and NME’s interview with David.
David will kick things off at The Brightside in Brisbane on Friday June 30, before hitting Sydney’s Oxford Art Factory on Saturday July 1, and finally Melbourne’s Howler on Friday July 7. Tickets are on sale now and can be found here.
That final date will mark a long-awaited homecoming for the Aussie musician, who rose to prominence in Melbourne’s underground DJ scene but has called Los Angeles home for the bulk of the past decade.
“I really like Howler as a venue,” he told NME. “It doesn’t feel like a straight-up music venue, it feels like more of a fancy bar or an old-school theatre – you know, it has those tables with the nice tablecloths hanging over them, and it just kind of feels more homely. And of course a lot of my friends and family will be there, so I’m really looking forward to celebrating with all of them.”
I’m coming home!! Finally heading back to Australia🇦🇺 to play my first Mild Minds shows there. A homecoming of sorts for me..bring a friend and lets dance!
June 30 —The Brightside, Brisbane
July 1 — @the_OAF, Sydney
July 8 — Howler, Melbourne
Tix on sale: https://t.co/74OxvpDAF8 pic.twitter.com/6yoVKjGziu— Mild Minds (@mild_minds) April 13, 2023
David started the Mild Minds project five years ago, so it’s fair to wonder why he’s only launching its first-ever Australian tour now. As he explained, David has “intentionally been a bit hands-off with Australia” because of how hard it can be to build an audience here.
“I didn’t want to tour from the ground up and have to play 50 club shows before I could sell any tickets,” he said. “I was just having fun with this project, slowly building it up for years, and now I’m actually playing these shows. To see that happen, and have everyone show up for them… It’s very humbling.”
As for what to expect from his live set, David said he “really like[s] to play the more relaxed and authentic card, rather than jump around on stage and go crazy”. His aim is to “express the subtle emotions in the music”, he says, with “these really cool visuals and a light show that kind of frames me onstage”.
When David launched Mild Minds as a side-project in 2018, he was eager to explore, as his own bio puts it, “the intersection of humanity and technology”. He’s long been inspired by artificial intelligence, with his interest in the concept predating the current boom in sociocultural discourse. “I was very resistant to a lot of that stuff back in the day,” he revealed, noting his initial fears over “how technology was, or is, going to affect the way we experience the world as humans”.
As he did more research, David’s curiosity grew to outweigh his hesitation. He began experimenting with AI-generated visuals for his live show and releases – the artwork for his latest EP, ‘It Won’t Do’, was created using Midjourney – and just days before NME’s interview, he was accepted into a pilot program for Google’s MusicLM platform (described as “a new experimental AI tool that can turn your text descriptions into music”).
David said he’s very excited to explore the possibilities it can offer: “I haven’t used any AI in my own music yet, because I don’t think any of the existing tools are that amazing. But it’s always made sense to me, because the way I think about music is very formulaic, very algorithmic – chords, then rhythm, then melody… I always thought the first tools [using AI to generate compositions] would be able to create those pieces separately; that’s probably how I’d be using the technology. The videos I’ve seen on [Google MusicLM] so far have been people prompting pretty silly things, so I’m going to see if, using my musical brain, I can actually generate something good.”
As AI becomes more prevalent in all manner of artforms, the discourse around its ethical implications intensifies. AI programs have allowed fans to generate songs “by” everyone from Iron Maiden, AC/DC and Nirvana to Drake, Kanye West and the late Notorious B.I.G. It’s posed the question: does AI-generated music infringe on the original artist’s intellectual property? Peter Gabriel and Sting say yes, but David Guetta and Billy Corgan are all for it.
For his part, David opined that “plagiarism is the same whether it’s being done by a human or a computer”. He added: “If I were to copy someone else’s style, I’m kind of immorally infringing on their IP – but that’s not illegal, you know? I’ll probably eat my words in the future when someone can just type in ‘Mild Minds’ and imitate exactly what I’m doing, and I have no income – but at the moment, it seems like it makes sense… I think it’s amazing that [AI has] allowed people with ideas to create art they couldn’t otherwise create. How could I complain if that was to happen with music too?”
David is currently focused on finishing his second studio album – the follow-up to 2020’s Australian Music Prize-nominated ‘MOOD’ – which he said will be out sometime next year. He won’t be using AI to make the songs, but he is keen to let his creativity flow in unique ways. “When I started this project,” he said, “the whole idea was that whatever came out of my mind, I was going to run with it – not umm-ing and ahh-ing and thinking, ‘Is anyone gonna care about this?’ And I want to do that again. I don’t want to sit there and overthink, like, ‘How can I make this bigger and better?’
“It’s really just about digging into your thoughts and creating freely without analytical pressure… And then you can get to the end of the song and go, ‘OK, what is this? How can I make it better?’ That’s where the analytics come in. But I’ve spent my whole career overthinking things, so I’m not allowing that to happen with this project.”
Mild Minds’ 2023 Australian tour dates are:
JUNE
Friday 30 – Meanjin/Brisbane, The Brightside
JULY
Saturday 1 – Eora/Sydney, Oxford Art Factory
Friday 7 – Naarm/Melbourne, Howler