ild Minds brought his first headline tour featuring live vocals to Portland's Doug Fir Lounge for a night of sexy electronic-wave music in June 2023. The man behind the project is Benjamin David and his dreamy, airy vocals pair perfectly with thick layers of smooth electronica. Each track is a special journey and the 2 million plays a month on Spotify he gets is a testament to that.
David is from Australia, which is a hotbed of musical creativity in the electronic scene. Artists like Pendulum, Flume, Anna Lunoe, Kalya Scintilla, Rufus Du Sol and Tame Impala have this ability to create unique sounds by mixing different genres together. Mild Minds is that type of artist. His incredible vocals are just as important as the beats behind them, giving the project a lyrical backbone that most electronic acts don't have. He reminds me a lot of TEED with his silky vocal pop melodies merging perfectly with a pulsating bass line. Odesza caught wind of Mild Minds after he released SWIM in 2018 and instantly signed him to their Foreign Family record label.
Since then he's opened for giant acts like Tycho, Big Wild, Cassian, and more. He's also collaborated with artists like Frameworks, produced remixes for Tycho & Odesza, and released the highly successful Mood album in 2020. Each of the tracks on this album has multi-million views and ford's remix of the track "SWIM" was even nominated for a Grammy. This forceful momentum naturally led to David's first international headline tour this year with stops in Australia, Coachella, and select cities in the U.S. The opening act on this tour was UK producer/vocalist, Edapollo.
All of this growth and the project began in 2017! Mild Minds' "genre bending combination of UK garage, house, ambient music" is so attractive to the ear and this was apparent at the show in Portland. The crowd was thrilled to hear his flawless vocals and get lost in the vibe for a while. You can catch Mild Minds later this summer at Outside Lands in San Francisco, in Austin, or you can always see him in Australia.
